


Degrees of Separation

by tackyink (Archaeological)



Category: One Piece
Genre: Action/Adventure, Chronic Illness, Crew as Family, Friendship, Gen, Memory Loss, Original Character-centric, Self-Insert, Undecided Relationship(s), no beta we die like parental figures in flashbacks, oc hails from dressrosa
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-09-18
Updated: 2020-12-22
Packaged: 2021-03-07 18:28:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 60,924
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26532139
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Archaeological/pseuds/tackyink
Summary: Law was looking for a book. Alex was looking forward to a quiet day at work. Unfortunately for her, that wasn’t what she found when they stumbled upon a piece of lost history in the basement of the town's library.It wasn’t like she needed a lot of convincing to make the call that would turn her life upside down, sotechnically,it was not his fault that she became a fugitive. She would’ve done it with or without his input. She was an expert at making wrong life decisions, after all. And she had a plan. She’d befine.(In which a cranky historian briefly meets a rookie pirate and nothing ever goes as planned.)
Comments: 60
Kudos: 127





	1. from rock bottom

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The self-insert I mentioned in the note at the end of Inked on Skin? This is it. Posting it under a different pseud because of reasons, but it's ya girl Archaeological, who can't stay a month away from the Heart Pirates without craving death. Who would have told me I would get attached to these dorks after *checks notes* five years writing them?
> 
> This was inspired about four years ago by the fact that I live in real life Dressrosa and one day a friend and I were talking about what, as historians, would we do if we ever came across a Poneglyph in the OP world. This is, in a way, an answer.
> 
> Characters will be added to the tags as (if) the story goes on. Same with pairings, if there are any. Fair warning, there's a very high chance that this'll remain a WIP forever.

In a remote corner of Paradise, outside of the main travel routes, there was an autumn island called Harlun, and on its shores there was a place called Duster Town, remarkable if only for the fact that every day was exactly the same and nothing of interest ever happened.

Duster Town was acceptably hot in summer, relatively cold in winter, and unavoidably wet and muddy the rest of the year. This had been a big reason for Alex’s stay to last as long as it had: five years and counting. She was fond of the weather because that was what living in summer islands for nearly twenty-two years did to a person.

She had been working in Duster Town’s old, old library since she had arrived there, having secured the job through contacts she had made while studying. Alex was a historian, and there weren’t a lot of secure jobs for people in her field unless one wanted to work under close supervision of government officers. She had never liked research that much, anyway – or rather, she had liked sticking her nose in archives for the sake of it, but the actual process of searching for documents, putting the pieces together and then writing papers sucked. Learning to satisfy her own curiosity was fun, being forced to share that knowledge was not. Besides, if there was an area of research that grabbed her attention more than anything else, it was that conspicuous century-wide blank in human history, and everybody in her profession knew what happened when someone tried to look too closely into that. Ohara was the biggest ‘accident’ that came to mind, but it wasn’t the only one. Things happened to people who knew too much. Everybody was aware of it, but complicit silence was a healthy tactic that her sensible colleagues employed.

Alex had opinions on that, as, admittedly, did most historians she had met, and since opinions were like assholes, she wasn’t going to be the gross weirdo showing hers to other people. Figuratively speaking or not, it was liable to get her in trouble with the law, and that was the last thing Alex wanted.

She liked her library, and even though she was incredibly disappointed that she’d never be able to set foot inside the Tree of Knowledge due to the unfortunate circumstance of having been born too late. Her job was quiet; since she wasn’t a librarian proper, they had put her at the entrance desk to check out and retrieve books, and she handled the petitions for documents researchers sent to the library. The building in which she worked dated back to several centuries, and the foundation upon which it was built, and which housed the local archive, suggested an even earlier date. It contained one of the biggest and best preserved documentary collections in that half of Paradise, so she spent a lot of time digging inside the archive to fulfill the researcher’s requests.

All in all, she thought she had had an amazing run so far, lending books, persecuting tardy neighbors to retrieve them, memorizing catalogs from too much use, and sending informative material to researchers who were actually doing important things with their lives, unlike herself. Her coworkers were few and not very nosy, which she appreciated, because she loved her time alone and wasn’t too fond of talking about the past.

She could see herself growing old in there and getting cobwebs, if sudden changes in the town hall didn’t run her out of the island, and the way things worked in moderately small towns like that, where everybody knew everybody and keeping a job was more a matter of knowing the right people and having been there for a while than being actually competent at it, meant that her position was likely secured in the long run. That said, the local mushrooms by themselves would have tempted her to stay, even without the rest of advantages. Not many of those in her hometown or Sabaody. Lots of heat and not nearly enough rain.

The sun wasn’t yet up when she woke up with an itchy nose in the small apartment she lived in, and a flurry of sneezes alerted her that she should have taken her allergy meds the night before. Navigating the place with closed eyes, she threw on the same skinny jeans and oversized sweater that she had left on a chair two days ago for yet another day at work. It took more effort than someone who had slept so many hours at her age had a right to. Like nearly every morning, really.

The last remaining days of winter had brought the cold in full force, at least for her summer island sensibilities, and after having a steaming cup of red tea that fogged up her glasses, she bundled inside her black coat and red scarf, put on a pair of burgundy gloves, and headed for the library with a thermos full of more tea, making the usual stop at the nearest bakery to buy a croissant. Her hands ached with the chilly breeze.

(She kept a kettle in the library, but there was never too much tea, in her humble opinion, and the thermos kept her freezing hands warm on the way.)

The sun had barely risen when she arrived at the building, an old stone structure that casted its shadow over a private square, though the tall iron fence was open at all times so the people of the town could use the benches and the fancy stone fountain in the middle of it. According to the records Alex had read, the whole area was built four hundred years back or so as the private residence of some rich family that eventually lost its fortune. The basement that doubled as the archive, though, was considerably older, but records stopped around 700 years back, like everywhere else, and so she couldn’t tell how old the foundations were, or what sort of building used to be there in the past without digging a trial trench in the square, something the town hall had been vehemently against when she suggested it. The refusal only made her want to do it more.

She crossed the fence and was halfway through the square when she saw someone in front of the library’s massive oak doors. That was so unusual it made her stop in her tracks. She wasn’t ready to interact with human beings this early in the morning. In fact, the baker was so used to her being absent at that time of the day that the only things she needed to say when she picked up her breakfast were ‘good morning’ and ‘thank you.’

She repositioned her glasses to peek above them and tried to focus her teary eyes on the figure before approaching it. It belonged to a man, obnoxiously tall as many in these seas had a tendency to, who wore a long black coat with a yellow pattern around the hem and a fluffy spotted hat that looked quite ridiculous but also warm, so she wasn’t going to judge in a morning like that. Since he seemed to be looking for something and having no luck, she did what she was paid for, though she was still off the clock, and approached him.

“Hello,” she said to catch his attention. Her voice came out raspy because this was only the fourth word she had uttered since waking up, so she immediately wanted to jump in one of the flowerbeds and melt into the muddy soil. She cleared her throat softly. “Is there anything you need?”

He turned around to look at Alex. He was in his twenties, and his face was kind of familiar. His earrings caught her attention, but then again, she had a bad tendency to not pay much attention to people’s faces and fixate on irrelevant details. This individual’s entire ensemble and circumstances, though, made him difficult to forget overall.

“Do you work here?” He asked.

She barely registered the question, because it was about then that she noticed the smiley yellow faces on his coat and the long-ass sword he held against his shoulder. She hadn’t been able to see them from behind, and if she had, she sure as hell would have kept her distance until he left.

That… had the potential to be really bad.

“Yes,” she said, thinking she should have not, but it was stupid to deny it when there was nowhere else to go in the plaza, she had offered to help, and the only place she could hide in was inside.

After she unlocked the building.

With the keys she was carrying in her hand.

Yeah, honesty had been the right move.

“What are the opening hours?”

That was also unexpected. “Nine AM to eight PM. It’s on the plaque—” She pointed to the side of the door, and she saw someone had vandalized it with rude graffiti. “Not again,” she sighed to herself, and then back to him, “Nine to eight.”

There were still thirty minutes to go, and she hoped to god that he didn’t plan on sticking around until it was time to open.

“I see,” he said, looking pensively at the door. “I’ll be back later, then.”

“Of course,” she replied, smiling, relieved, and then panicking inside because there was a pirate planning on coming to her workplace that morning and this was an anxiety factor she hadn’t asked to be burdened with. He had to be dangerous. People who weren’t dangerous didn’t carry swords around. Not that people who were dangerous sometimes didn’t carry weapons, but at least those had the grace of not putting every stranger around them on edge. And wait a minute, were those tattoos on his fingers? She couldn’t see all the letters, but she could guess, and after she did, she wished she hadn’t.

When she thought he was already done and about to go, she made her even more nervous by saying, “Just to make sure, I heard you have a sizeable medicine collection.”

Ah, so he was looking for something specific. It made more sense than him simply waltzing in for some light reading, she supposed. “You heard right. It’s not updated often, but it was until ten years ago or so.” Then they ran out of funding. “If you’re looking for recent studies, you may not be in luck.”

Medicine. Why medicine? This man was a pirate. Was he a doctor in his ship? She regretted more than ever having such a bad memory for names and faces. She should take a look at the newspaper archive when she went in, just in case.

“Lucky me, then. What I’m looking for is older than that.”

She noticed a bit of a northern accent. He sounded… not quite polite, but not aggressive, either. Clinical. At the same time, it made the innocent statement sound vaguely threatening. She was curious now about what he wanted to read. What if he was one of _those_ weird pirates? There was a chance, she supposed. Like winning the lottery twice, which she didn’t count on.

“That’s good,” she replied awkwardly, and then added in a valiant effort to be left alone, “There’s a café around the corner that’s already open, if you need to kill some time.”

He looked slightly surprised at the courtesy, and nodded before going off.

And when he was far enough to be a very stupid but not totally unsafe to say, she spoke a little louder to tell him, “Excuse me! Weapons aren’t allowed inside the library!”

The dude seemed amused when he looked over his shoulder to look at her, and he didn’t say anything as he walked off.

Nobody could say she hadn’t tried.

* * *

Unbearably jittery after the encounter, Alex went on to switch on the lights of the entire building, put the last few books she hadn’t returned to the shelves the day before in their place, and picked up the day’s newspaper to sit down at the front desk to scarf down the croissant and hopefully wash down all that nervous energy with a cup of tea.

If her first encounter in the morning was a sign of what was to come, she could tell her day was going to be shit. She should have known when her own sneezing woke her up.

Alex wasn’t sure when or how her anxiety had started. It just had, a few years prior, seemingly unprompted, and though it wasn’t severe, thankfully, it had a tendency to assault her when she least expected it. Like a pirate. Pirates did that, right? Not all of them, but according to her limited experience there was a fifty-fifty chance that he would, at the very least, turn out to be a pain in the ass.

Still, without any additional intel, she couldn’t think of any ulterior motives for the guy to come to the library. Since she couldn’t do anything to stop him, for her peace of mind, she decided to be willfully optimistic and _believe_.

Or at least she could try. She had never been too good at this denial thing.

A several bites into her pastry and a few pages into the newspaper, she came across an article about a sunken Marine warship by a pirate submarine, and she choked on her tea when she saw the same smiley face on the picture that accompanied the article. On said submarine. Accompanied by the word “DEATH.” Good on her for guessing what was on his fingers. At the same time, a coworker arrived, and blanching, she said good morning, got up from her seat and made a run for the newspaper archive, where they also kept in storage a copy of every bounty the Marines distributed with the World Economic Journal.

She didn’t have to look too far to see that yes, the face was familiar because it was supposed to be. She had classified it a few times in the last months – every time the guy got a bounty raise.

Surgeon of Death. Heart Pirates. Captain of one of the several rookie crews that were stirring up trouble that year. Those were the worst, they thought they were at the top of the world just because they had made it into the Grand Line. She could deal with older pirates, but she had yet to come across a newbie that wasn’t an unrestrained asshole.

She thought she saw something about dismemberments in the poster, did a double-take because she had surely read wrong, and by the time she was done with all the crimes attributed to the guy she just put the bounty back in place, went to the front desk once again, and told her concerned coworker, “A famous pirate will probably show up today. Don’t mind him. Let’s hope he just wants to read.”

She looked a little frightened. “Should I call the Marines?”

“If worst comes to worst. Let’s try not get involved if we can. He didn’t seem aggressive.”

“Okay,” she replied, sounding relieved. “Good luck out here, I’ll be in the back tagging the new arrivals.”

“Some people are lucky.”

She sighed and turned the page. Sipped on her tea. It was getting cold. Sipped on it again. She just had to play it cool. She was a professional. The guy had been okay to her.

She just hoped he would come soon, because she wasn’t so sure she could drown her nerves in tea anymore.

It was okay.

Everything was surprisingly okay.

The pirate, the day, the lunch she had at the café around the corner – waitress said the guy even tipped – but yes, everything had gone fine.

Alex didn’t move a lot from the lower floor because she often had to come and go from the front desk to the archive, but she made escapades upstairs to make sure everything was still standing.

She had seen the pirate sitting next to a window in the medicine section reading one of those thick tomes that looked very interesting but made her dizzy because she suffered from having a very graphic imagination.

Her coworkers, who roamed up there more often than her, gave her periodic reports, and one of them remarked that he was kind of hot, didn’t she agree?

No, she did not. The radiator was hot. The kettle was hot. The adjective could hardly be applied to a man unless he was on fire.

Though perhaps he was not a human man, because he had spent _all day long sitting in the same position, staring at that book_. She had to admire that attention span, if nothing else. She was pretty short on that, lately.

And so, having avoided any type of incident during a day in which she was very tense for no reason after all, it came time to close shop.

The pirate was still there.

Her coworkers were, very conveniently, not. She was sure it had nothing to do with the fact that someone had to remind the wanted man that it was late and he had to go.

As much as she wanted to go home and have dinner, the temptation to stay in her post so she didn’t have to interact with a criminal that hacked his victims to pieces was strong, and no one could blame her for it.

But then he appeared.

The massive door in front of her began to open, and Alex thought it was one of her treacherous coworkers returning to pick up something until a head peeked inside the hall.

“Hi?” The newcomer said shyly.

Alex wasn’t sure if the gross amounts of tea she drank every day had finally caught up to her and were making her hallucinate, because she was seeing a polar bear’s face.

“Hi?” She replied, to busy processing what was in front of her to come up with words of her own.

It seemed that that was enough for the bear, because it – no, not it, he? She? How deep was a female bear’s voice anyway? – pushed the door open some more, becoming more visible. A bright orange jumpsuit was not what she was expecting, but the smiley face on its chest and the sight of the sword the pirate had been carrying that morning didn’t leave a lot of room for imagination.

The creature in front of her eyes was a bear walking on two legs. A pirate polar bear. Probably a boy, with that size. Was he a mink? She had never seen one so up close.

“I’m looking for my captain,” he said, clutching the sword against his body. “Is he around?”

Words decided to come back to her, although in a rather clumsy manner. “Oh. Yes. Yes, I think so. He should be upstairs, reading.”

The bear smiled and she melted at the sight. “Can you… tell him to come?”

“Sure,” she said, sealing her fate. She had to face it sooner than later, she thought as she rose from her seat. The bear was still half-hidden by the door, his boots barely touching the tiles of the library. Curious. Was he that shy? “Why don’t you step inside?”

“I thought you can’t enter the library with weapons.”

His reasoning hit her in the solar plexus with the force of a herd of rainbow ponies. “Right,” she breathed out, wondering how something in the planet had managed to be so big and cute at once. “You’re absolutely right. I’ll go get your captain.”

“Thank you!”

Alex walked as fast as she could towards the stairs until she was out of sight and covered her face to keep her reaction under control. _So. Goddamn. Cute._ Was that how those pirates lived? Trying not to squeal whenever the resident polar bear was being sweet?

Steeling herself, she walked up the remaining steps, hoping the captain had somehow vanished while she wasn’t looking.

No such luck.

She stepped a little more forcefully than necessary as she approached him from behind a shelf, always staying at a safe distance, to try to catch his attention, but he didn’t move.

(The annoying voice in her head told her that the only safe distance from that man was a sea away.)

Could he have been asleep? That would have explained things. What was his name again?

“Mr. Trafalgar?” She tried. She wasn’t sure if she should have made known that she knew who he was, but the deed was done. He looked up. “It’s about time to close and… there’s a polar bear looking for you in the reception hall.”

“Bepo’s here?” He looked in confusion at her, and then at the window. It was dark outside. “I hadn’t noticed it had gotten so late. Eight, right?”

He stretched in the chair. Between the movement and the spotted hat and jeans, he reminded her of an overgrown leopard.

“Almost,” she offered.

He glanced at the book, frowning. Granted, his face seemed to be stuck in a perpetual frown and he didn’t sound angry. “Do you have the same hours tomorrow?”

“Oh, no, we don’t open on Sundays,” she replied, wondering if this was the exact point where the conversation would go downhill. She attempted to make it better. “But you can come on Monday if you want to keep reading.”

He grimaced, this time for real. “Can’t do. We leave on Monday morning.”

“Oh.” A quick stop, then. It was a thing that happened often. The recording time for the Log Pose was less than a day in Harlun. “Well, we could make some photocopies, but…” The book was way too long for that, and he seemed to be about halfway through.

“Can I take it out tonight and give it back to you sometime tomorrow?”

She appreciated wholeheartedly that he wasn’t getting mad at her, but the thought of the book going out of the library like that made all her alarms go off. “Not without a library card.” Which was only for residents, obviously.

She braced for retaliation, but it never came.

The pirate looked kind of conflicted. She didn’t know what was so interesting about the book that he couldn’t find it in another island, and she didn’t need to know the options that were crossing his mind to realize that she probably wouldn’t like them.

Since idiots had to find ways to console themselves, she would tell herself during the following hours that the only reason she made a tremendously stupid offer was to avoid the much worse alternatives.

“I’ll actually be working here tomorrow. The library is closed, but if you’re really that interested, I can let you in.”

Or maybe she was a fucking bleeding heart who couldn’t pass up the opportunity to make someone’s day better for free. But ironically, _at what price_.

She recognized the emotions on his face. First surprise, then suspicion. “Why would you?”

Because she really was that stupid, she wanted to say. “You’re a doctor, right? I don’t want a dead patient on my conscience because you couldn’t finish a book you needed. Anyway… you’re free to come tomorrow.”

And she left him there, quickly making her way down to retrieve her stuff. The bear had come inside, at last, and he looked up from the documents on Alex’s desk. She would have been surprised if he could read that handwriting.

“He’s coming,” she said with a small smile, but she didn’t know if it showed. She had, on occasion, been asked why she was angry when she tried to smile. “I’m going to pick up my things inside.”

He looked pleased, though. “Thank you.”

“You’re welcome.”

She went into the back room, taking extra long on purpose until she heard movement outside and the sound of the door closing. By the time she found the courage to crawl out of her hole, the pirates were nowhere to be seen.

She left a note in her desk’s drawer, just in case, saying that if she disappeared under mysterious circumstances, Trafalgar Law was to blame. She had thought about phoning a coworker to alert her, but she wasn’t supposed to let anybody in on Sundays, much less a wanted man, and she didn’t want to risk this incident reaching the ears of the mayor.

For the first time in years, her stomach couldn’t handle the tea and she had to throw most of her cup down the drain. Damn nerves. Her hands were acting up more than usual, to the point where the warmth of the thermos wasn’t doing a lot to soothe the pain. She would have worried about that if it weren’t because of more pressing matters.

* * *

Even earlier than the day before, he was already waiting for her at the door when she arrived.

Alex would admit without missing a beat that she had been an idiot for offering – never mind the very real possibility that the guy could have broken in to retrieve the book and left damages the library couldn’t afford to repair – but he was either equally dumb or exceedingly confident for having shown up. Alone. Alex could have called the Marines, for all he knew.

She didn’t miss the sword he was carrying, this time around.

She put two and two together then. Of course. He had appeared before the hour to check that the surroundings were safe.

“I didn’t expect you to actually show up,” he said as a greeting, and she reached for the key in her pocket. His tone was impressed with a good dash of mockery. “Do you know who I am?”

He already knew the answer, since she had called him by name the day before. With only two sentences, he demolished most of the halfway positive impression he had made the day before, and Alex, already predisposed to think he was a dick, decided he was exactly that.

She was tired and anxious, so she couldn’t muster up any facial expression as she said, “Should I care?” Upon noticing that had sounded even worse than she meant to, she added in a hurry, “I mean, what’s the point of asking that? Do you want me to turn around and leave the door locked?”

He didn’t seem to take it badly, thank the heavens. He looked a bit amused, in fact. “I don’t need you to unlock a door.”

“I’m well aware,” she replied in a monotone. “I appreciate you had the courtesy of waiting.” The budget was tight and changing the lock would have been a royal waste of money.

She opened the door and went in first to turn on the lights. He closed the door after going in, and she would have usually locked it again, but she really did not want to be stuck alone inside of a building with a stranger, even if the state of the lock wouldn’t make much of a difference.

“I’ll be working downstairs.” She pointed to an old, reinforced door on the wall behind the front desk. “Give me a heads up when you’re done.”

That sword was making her unnecessarily jumpy. He didn’t need to have it with him.

“Alright,” he said, glancing at the staircase to the second floor, and then he must have noticed that she was giving the sword the stink eye, because he tapped it against his shoulder and smirked. “Got a problem?”

Yeah, one about two meters tall. “None as long as you don’t use it.”

“As long as you don’t give me a reason to.”

She wanted to say a lot of things. That they were alone, that he was kind of a dick, that yes, she was as dumb as he was thinking, and to please leave her alone until he was done and only then appear to say goodbye and thank you.

Instead, she picked up a folder from her desk drawer and a lantern from the wall and left it at, “Enjoy your reading.”

He took the hint and left, and so did she.

The door to the archive closed behind her with a heavy thud, and she lit the lantern.

It was a fire hazard in a library, but it was inevitable, because the basement didn’t have electricity. After many years of pressuring the city hall for a budget increase, the council had seen fit to make renovations and extend the electrical installation to the basement. She just had to keep herself from setting the archive on fire for a couple months and the risk would be no more.

She went to the farthest area from the entrance and set the lantern on an ancient wood table. The basement was pure grey stone from floor to ceiling, making it permanently cold. She hadn’t bothered to take off her coat and scarf, but the gloves had had to go and she wasn’t happy about it. She had icicles for hands as every winter, and this year they had begun to hurt earlier than usual.

Alex had decided to put in some overtime that week because she was researching a family tree that a cousin of the mayor, a pretentious git that paid very well, had commissioned. Something about proving a blood relation to a noble family from a nearby island to have a claim to somebody else’s lands. Alex didn’t care. She had been trained for this thing, a job was a job, and she was going to do it to the best of her ability. Even if she had absolutely loathed genealogy back when she was still a student.

She didn’t think her employer would be too happy with her findings, though, because so far she’d only found a mess of marriages that didn’t bring her any closer to the neighboring island. She even found some records of a family branch that had one of those pesky Ds in the name and then disappeared from record. She supposed they just left the kingdom. She had noticed that every D. that rose to prominence was an outright weirdo, and she wasn’t sure if it was just confirmation bias because boring people didn’t make the news, but damn it they didn’t seem to crop up in the most outlandish incidents. There was the infamous Monkey D. Dragon, his father Garp, who she had seen a couple of times in person and seemed frankly overbearing, the guys in Whitebeard’s crew… And the biggest weirdo of all, of course: the King of Pirates. She’d heard from an acquaintance funny stories of him to last her a lifetime. A lot of the mystique around his figure was lost, but that was one of the things that made history interesting, in her opinion.

Sitting down on the floor to open the cabinet on the lower part of a bookcase, she took a look at the bundles of papers there. It was a seriously old part of the archive, housing documents from six hundred years back, but thanks to the cold and darkness, they had stood fairly well against the tide of time.

She reached inside and pulled out the dozen of tomes at the forefront to make sure noting was trapped behind. That part of the archive had been catalogued way before Alex’s time, after all, and not every archivist had been as careful as they should have. She had learned that the hard way, finding folders that didn’t match the catalog and misplaced pages centuries into the future. Whenever that happened, she passed the mess to her coworkers, the actual archivists, who had a tendency to curse her incessantly until they fixed the issue, but it was all in good humor.

Very carefully, she took the lantern and approached it to the cabinet. She looked inside and stared at the darkness. In fact, she had to stare for a very long while before realizing that she wasn’t looking at the back of the cabinet or even the wall.

There was an empty space there.

A secret compartment?

Work forgotten, she had a good minute of doubt, sitting on the floor. She was severely allergic to dust mites and exploring further was a health hazard. There could be spiders or rats or fungi or lethal mold. She could wait until the next day and ask a coworker to check it out in her stead.

But the temptation. There was only so much willpower she could exert in less than twenty-four hours until she ran out.

Please let it not be rats or fungi, she thought as she peeled off her coat and scarf to avoid getting them dusty, and dived in.

* * *

It had been eleven years since he had any anything to remember his parents by other than the bitter memories of how Flevance had gone up in flames.

If someone accused Law of dwelling too much in the past, he would have denied it with full knowledge that he was a liar. But there was a hint of truth in that, and that was that he didn’t think of his dead family often. It was another particular piece of past that haunted him.

There was nothing left of Flevance but ashes and ruin. He knew it well, and that was why he avoided revisiting those times.

And yet.

He closed the book he had just finished, running a finger over the cover. He remembered the nights his parents spent locked in their study, writing the results of their investigations in order to share their knowledge, hoping that a cure could be found in time.

He had spent the last two days reading every word in their voices, surprising himself when he could still recognize in the wording which parts had written who.

He’d been thinking from the moment he’d found the book, the first time in over a decade he had found a copy of it anywhere, that he’d have to let it go, but he wasn’t willing to. He had considered offering to buy it from the librarian, but given she hadn’t even let him take it out the day before, he had a feeling that she would refuse. She was understandably wary of him.

Well, he was already going to hell, so proving her suspicions right wouldn’t make a difference.

He slipped the book inside his coat and went downstairs to find her. He’d at least say thank you before she could find out what he had done. He was mildly curious about her reaction, but he’d make sure to miss that.

He opened the door to the place where she’d said she’d be to be greeted by darkness and a faint light, and he immediately tumbled down half a set of stairs when he set a foot down and only found air.

Cursing under his breath, he fought against the urge to leave unannounced and, going against popular advice, he followed the light at the end of the tunnel. It got increasingly brighter the more he advanced, passing bookcase after bookcase. The way they were set made the basement somewhat labyrinthine, and he was unsure he’d be able to find his way upstairs again if he had to follow the same path he was taking.

And right as he reached the source of light… it disappeared. Briefly. As did half of the librarian’s body inside of a low cabinet in which there was no human way an adult’s torso could fit.

How interesting.

He cleared his throat, and she visibly jumped, hitting her head with a resounding plunk and an ow. She pulled out of the cabinet, looking pretty embarrassed when she faced him.

“Um, oh—Are you heading out?”

“That was the plan.”

“Okay, then,” she said like nothing had happened. Her hair, brown and chin-length, was covered in dust bunnies, as was her sweater. She took off her glasses to clean them with her clothes, revealing a set of dark circles under her eyes that could rival his. When she noticed she couldn’t wipe anything with what she had available, she discarded the glasses on top of a nearby table. “The door’s open, so—”

“What’s in there?” He asked.

“Oh, nothing important,” she said calmly, and rubbed her nose with the back of a hand. “Just old registries.”

She watched her watch him. She wasn’t budging under his stare, but Law could detect lies from miles away. Also dust allergies. He hoped she was getting medicated for those, because this town was supposed to be a quick, relaxing stop, and he wasn’t in the mood to get the corpse of a librarian added to his list of crimes. “Inside the wall?”

“I guess someone saw fit to build a compartment in the cabinet?”

“A compartment where an adult and a lamp can disappear into?”

She spread her arms, as if to make a point. “I’m fairly small.”

“Don’t you say.”

Her expression went from neutral to mildly annoyed as she dropped her arms and the pretense altogether. “You really don’t have anything better to do in town?”

The question would have been fair had there been anything out there other than mud and the tavern his men had occupied since the day they arrived. “Any suggestions?”

She conceded the point. “No, not really.” With a sigh, she nudged her head towards the cabinet. “There’s no wall. I think there’s a hidden room in there. Too wide for a passage.”

“Is this something common in libraries?”

“No, but it is with old buildings, to an extent. And these shelves may be old, but they sure as hell aren’t as ancient as the basement.” She knocked on the wood. “Someone hid that room when this basement was repurposed as an archive.”

Consider his curiosity officially piqued. “Any idea of what’s inside?”

“I was about to find out.”

“So?”

“You want to check it out?” She sounded confused and like she didn’t want to hear the answer to that question.

Too bad he wasn’t feeling charitable. “Sure. You never know where a treasure may be hiding.”

If she had been tense until then, at that moment she looked ready to shove him out with her own hands. “Any objects that may be in there could be historical artifacts and need to be treated as such.”

“And are _you_ going to stop me if I decide to take something?”

Her frown deepened, but there was little else she could do. She had to know that, even if he left just so they wouldn’t have to put up with each other any longer, he could come back any time he wanted, key or not.

There wasn’t as much bite in her voice when she relented. “Be my guest,” she said, offering him the lamp and gesturing towards the cabinet.

“Ladies first,” he replied, which didn’t win him any points, going by her huff, but she didn’t waste more time arguing and headed inside.

And then he was left without any light on his side.

“Well?” She asked, sounding a bit nervous.

“Are you in a hurry?” He said, feeling his way down the cabinet until he found the opening. There. He saw a faint light on the other side.

“Do you enjoy making people uncomfortable?”

“It’s a job perk, so might as—” _Thud._ His hat fell off his head and rolled to the other side. “—well.”

“…Did you hit your head?”

“No,” he lied, crawling out of the cabinet and picking up his hat.

“That’s why I tried to give you the lamp,” she said with obvious satisfaction, ignoring his reply, and holding the lamp higher to cover as much terrain as possible with the light. “The floor and walls look the same as outside. This is an extension of the basement, built at the same time as the rest of it, by the looks of it.”

“Why do you think someone would block the entrance?”

“To hide something or someone, so there’s a good chance there’s going to be a corpse instead of treasure. In fact, I hope it’s a corpse,” she sentenced.

“You have strange hobbies.”

“You wouldn’t try to steal a corpse. At least I’d avoid a pointless argument.”

Well, that depended on its state. He was bored, and it couldn’t hurt to take a body part back for closer inspection.

“…You wouldn’t, right?”

“Technically, it wouldn’t be anyone’s property.”

“Just saying, you have no right to judge anybody else’s hobbies. Hm?” She walked forward a few steps, and the light revealed something square standing in the middle of the room.

“Doesn’t look like your corpse,” he said.

“Doesn’t look like your treasure, either,” she replied, but she seemed to tune him out as she approached the object, and by the time she was standing in front of it, her eyes were wide open and her mouth fell a little bit.

Law waited for her to say something, but she was too caught up inspecting the thing. He took a few steps forwards and saw a perfect stone cube with etched inscriptions that covered one of its sides completely, and whatever it was, the librarian must found it fascinating. She was running her free hand over the symbols, leaving trails in the dust, and looking at them so up close that she may as well have been head-butting the stone. He was fairly sure that he had forgotten he was there. And that had to mean something, since she had made clear that she didn’t want him there.

“What is it?” He asked. There wasn’t anything interesting to him about that stone, and the fact that she had the lamp he had refused to take just to be a smartass meant that he couldn’t inspect the rest of the room while she did her thing.

She wasn’t brought out of her reverie right away. When she finally spoke, she took a couple of steps back to look at the entirety of the cube. “It’s a Poneglyph. It makes no sense, but it has to be.”

That didn’t answer anything. “And what’s that supposed to be?”

“A Poneglyph’s a… a record of sorts. There’s an indeterminate number scattered across the world, and they contain… well. Historical records.”

“So something that makes sense to have it in an archive.”

“Well, yes, but no. Poneglyphs contain forbidden knowledge.” Her stare could bore a hole in the stone if she kept it up. “You know the Void Century? Have you heard about the tragedy of Ohara?”

“On passing.” He recalled the news about the Tree of Knowledge burning and the scientists being declared enemies of the World Government. “One of the people involved has joined a pirate crew recently, hasn’t she? Devil Child, they call her.”

“Do they?” It seemed to come as entirely new information for her, and that made her look at him, at last. Without the glasses and under the light of the lamp’s flame, her eyes looked yellow. “I don’t pay that much attention to pirate news. No one ever comes here.” The question of why was he there was left unspoken, and thus unanswered. “Anyway. They are the only remaining records of the Void Century, and its study is prohibited by the World Government. Rumor goes that Ohara’s experts were working on them.”

“World Government covering up stuff then. Nothing new.”

“Indeed.” She switched the lamp to her other hand and glanced back at the Poneglyph. “I wonder why there’s one here. They are supposed to be extremely hard to find.”

“What does it say?”

“I don’t know. Nobody can read them. Maybe the people of Ohara could have, but…” She shrugged. “We’re twenty years late.”

She stared pensively at the Poneglyph, the lines of frustration etched on her face showing more emotion than anything he’d seen so far from her. Then, unexpectedly, she offered the lamp to him. “You want to take a look around, right?”

Their hands brushed for a moment when he took it by the handle, and she turned again towards the stone and crossed her arms.

He was still curious.

“What are you going to do?” He asked.

“Hm? About what?”

“What do you think?”

“The Poneglyph? Did you not hear what I said? Its study is prohibited.” He tone became despondent. “And… the city hall is going to know it’s here in a few months.”

“Why?”

“Renovations. We’re supposed to get electricity in the basement. Lamps are a fire hazard.”

“So it’s your only chance. Could you decipher it?”

“With years of work and research, maybe. But that’s—nah, no way, they reduced an island to bits because of this. It’s not worth the risk. I couldn’t do it anyway.”

“Sounds to me like you’re just making excuses, but what do I know? I’m just a pirate.”

And he started walking around the perimeter of the chamber, in hopes of finding something. After a few minutes of continuous disappointment, the librarian spoke up, and she sounded oddly polite.

“Could you wait here a moment? I want to pick up some material from outside.”

It was his turn to be suspicious. “Won’t you need the light?”

“No, I can navigate this place in the dark. I’ll be right back.”

He supposed that this was too convoluted to be a trap, but he felt kind of naked having left Kikoku in the archive. He didn’t feel uncomfortable for long, though, because true to word, about a minute later and after bonking her head on the way back in, she reappeared in the room with large sheets of paper and several other packs that she stacked up in front of the stone.

“Is that carbon paper?” He asked as he approached her. He hadn’t found anything else in the room, but damn if the library’s resident gremlin wasn’t a welcome entertainment.

“That’s right.” And she climbed on top of the unstable pile of papers and started to smooth the carbon paper over the stone. “I’ll transcribe it back home.”

This was a turn of events he hadn’t seen coming. “What happened to ‘it’s forbidden?’”

“All the good things in life are unhealthy for you.” With one hand, she pulled out a roll of adhesive tape and cut a few pieces with her teeth to stick the carbon paper to the Poneglyph. “Besides, fuck the government.”

Law couldn’t help but smirk at that. “A commendable sentiment.”

“Why, thank you!” She beamed at him, whether sarcastically or not, it was hard to tell. With considerable effort, she kept sticking pieces of carbon paper to the surface. He guessed the plan was to cover it entirely.

“Do you need help?”

“Are you offering?”

For someone who had been so wary of him a few hours earlier, she was a bit of a smartass, herself.

“Good question.”

He thought he heard her snort, but he couldn’t tell if it was because she was annoyed or amused. Probably the former.

“That stack of papers looks very unstable,” he commented.

“Yes, thanks for mentioning it.”

“You aren’t tall enough to reach the corner of the Poneglyph.”

Silence, resignation, and the telltale look of someone who was looking at an infestation beyond the capabilities of pest control. “I don’t suppose you would help me?”

“If you asked nicely.”

She looked at him with a strange face, one that indicated many thoughts and the inability to pick a single one and answer accordingly.

“No?” He tried.

Her eyes narrowed as she motioned to one of the papers. “Can you hold this up for me, please?”

His reply, however, was immediate. “I’ll think about it.”

She sighed, determined to ignore him, and returned to her work like she hadn’t expected anything from him at all, which he thought was a great attitude to have. But again, because he didn’t particularly care to see her slip and crack her head against the stone tiles, he did the tremendous effort of lifting up an arm to hold the paper in place.

She paused to look at him. Stone-faced as she was, it was hard to tell if there was any surprise in there or just mere curiosity, but she smiled a little when she said, “Look at you. Maybe the real treasure was the friends we made along the way.”

He let go of the paper, but since she didn’t stop chuckling to herself, he nudged the stack under her feet to remind her who was in control here.

* * *

Alex said goodbye to the pirate that had managed to surpass her admittedly low expectations, but not before filing him under the pain in the ass category. Her classification system stood the test of reality so far.

Relieved at being alone again, she locked the door, did a few stretches, and decided that she’d had a lot of emotions that day and deserved another cup of tea.

One hurdle overcome. The pirate had seemed a way bigger problem before she’d found a fucking Poneglyph in the basement. Now she had no clue what to do with the new one.

It didn’t take her long to realize that she was fucked, no matter how she looked at it.

She felt oddly calm about it at that moment. She supposed it had something to do with the shock of the discovery and that the danger was still nebulous, if certain.

She sipped on her tea.

She was the only person that ventured regularly into that art of the archive, but alerting about the discovery herself was out of the question. If they knew she knew, they’d probably make her not know anything anymore.

The problem was that the construction workers would surely find the door, and now that she and Trafalgar had been walking around the room, there was obvious tampering. Cleaning the dust would get rid of the footprints and marks on the Poneglyph, but the lack of dust would be as suspicious as the sets of footprints.

The next gulp of tea scorched her throat.

So, only two options remained: stay, wait patiently and leave up to chance whether an accident happened to her, and probably the whole library with its workers, or quit her job, take a boat somewhere else and drop off the radar. The first one wasn’t worth the risk.

Two things to take into account with the remaining option: anybody with half a brain could suspect that her sudden departure had something to do with the Poneglyph, and in that case, all suspicions would fall on her. The plus side was that her coworkers would probably be spared.

What to do? It was a long way to her hometown. She could settle back there if she was spared from the government’s suspicions. If not…

Well. There _was_ Sabaody.

Which was stupid for several reasons, the main one being that it was on Marineford’s and Mary Geoise’s doorsteps.

The ache in her hands felt especially acute, even through the heat radiating from the cup.

It would come down to luck, no matter what she did. Maybe she was overthinking the situation and nothing would happen. Workers would move the Poneglyph in the middle of the night, or seal it away while no one was looking, and that would be the end of it.

But assuming a best case scenario would most likely spell death in this situation, and she’d like to avoid that. She may not have had a super interesting life, but she was quite fond of having it.

Reality started to sink in then. Oh, god. She had to make a run for it, didn’t she?

She left the cup aside on her desk and started pacing around and up the stairs to burn energy. She could tell the city hall that a family member was ill and she needed to go back home. That would be sensible, but all the paperwork and finding a replacement for her would take weeks. At least one month would go by before she could leave the island without raising suspicions. Being able to cross the Red Line depended entirely on travel time and the wait for permissions to traverse the Holy Land, both of which would take money she didn’t have. She could probably cover the expenses to get to the Red Line, but not the rest of the way.

She’d need to pick up a quick job in between to replenish her wallet, then.

Why couldn’t she go work to a normal library? Why had this happened to her?

She hurried towards the medical section to put the book back in its place, and when she didn’t find it in the cart, she went to check the desks. All empty. Maybe he had put it back in place?

But all there was where the book should have been was an empty space, and a nervous heat started to rise to Alex’s cheeks as she realized that she had been duped and the son of a bitch had stolen her book after she’d had the generosity to open the door for him on a Sunday so he didn’t have to break and enter.

She was too full of anxious energy, with all that had happened, to sit still and fume silently. She’d never been prone to resignation where there were still options left to try, and if what her near future held for her was a one way trip to Impel Down, getting murdered by a pirate wasn’t the worst that could happen.

Harlun wasn’t big, and it was muddy outside. Very much so. Enough that Alex picked up her belongings, went outside, and, for once, was grateful that the roads were made of dirt and not pavement.

She hurried through the private plaza, carrying her bag on her shoulder, boots stomping on the cobblestones until she reached the road and saw a recent pair of shoe imprints that headed down the street.

With her black coat open and billowing in the wind, she went on Trafalgar Law’s pursue and, to her relief, his trail didn’t lead to the port, but rather to the tavern where every single sailor that stopped in Harlun seemed to spend their days in. Not like they had much of a choice.

A friendly face saluted her from behind the counter as she crossed the door. “Long time no see, A—”

“ _HiAl_ ,” she said to the bartender so fast that she wasn’t sure if the words came out properly, but she didn’t care, because the bastard she was looking for was sitting on a barstool right in front of her. She couldn’t interpret the look on his face, but what she could tell for sure was that she wanted to deck him in it. “You,” she said, accusatory.

He smirked, and her irritation only grew. “What a coincidence. Here for a drink?”

She inhaled deeply, angrily, walked up to him and dropped her bag on the nearest barstool. Damn, he was tall, and so was his seat. Even sitting down, he towered above her. Not that it mattered, because most people tended to be taller than Alex, so this didn’t register as an intimidating factor. “You know what I’m here for.”

“I’m afraid not.”

“You stole my book.”

“ _Your_ book?”

She had come here to embarrass herself, hadn’t she? Too late to turn back now. “ _The library’s book_.”

“What makes you think I did?”

Oh, he was insufferable.

“Do you take me for an idiot?” She retorted. “You’re the only person who could have taken it.”

“How so? The library’s closed today.”

Alex’s mouth fell a little bit open at Law’s flippant answer under the curious gaze of Al. “Really?” She said, unimpressed. “I can’t make you return it even if I try, and that’s how you’re going to play it?”

He wore a self-satisfied smile, and he wasn’t even looking at her. “I really don’t know what you’re talking about.”

She considered what to say for a few seconds. “Okay,” was the best she could do. She didn’t know why she felt so disappointed. It wasn’t like she had expected anything good from him, from the start. He was right if he thought she was an idiot. “Serves me right for trying to help,” she said, yanking on her bag to retrieve it and turning around without facing him. “Bye, Al.”

Being taken advantage of was the worst feeling.

She hadn’t taken a second step away from him when a hand grabbed her by her left arm and pulled her back.

“Wait,” she heard Trafalgar say. When she turned around, he wasn’t smirking anymore. “What’s the name of the book?”

“You know the name,” she said irritated, confused, and offended that he was invading her personal bubble.

“Do you?”

“ _Effects of heavy metal poisoning on the cardiovascular system_ , I think?” She said, punctuating the sentence with a tired sigh. “Do you need the reference too?”

“No. The authors.”

“Are you getting at something or are you just laughing at me?”

He let go of her to search for something in the coat he had discarded on the barstool to his other side. The book she was looking for. He held it up for her, but didn’t offer it, and Alex didn’t try to take it by surprise because there’s no point in stealing when you can’t make a swift escape with the loot.

She looked at the names written below the title. “Doctor…” She muttered, and then she read the surname, and the surname below it, and she blinked a couple of times before redirecting her attention to Law. “You aren’t old enough to have written this book.”

It said Trafalgar. Twice. Family? Was this a con? Did he come from a line of doctors?

“Obviously.”

“A parent?” No, there were two. “Parents?”

“Bingo.”

Alex’s indignation and disappointment fizzled against her will. He was a thief, he’d taken advantage of her good will and was waving the prize in front of her face, she should’ve been furious!

And yet, she had to be a bleeding heart _again_. “And I don’t suppose you can ask them or the printing press for another copy?”

His response wasn’t immediate, but when he gave one, it was silent. He opened the book from the back, and showed her the words printed behind the back cover:

_Printed in Flevance._

That was a resounding no if there ever was one. But did that also mean…? No, he couldn’t have anything to do with that incident, there wasn’t anybody left from Flevance. Perhaps his parents had been working there when war broke out. It was safe to assume that the son of two doctors wouldn’t become a famous pirate if he still had a family to fall back onto. This was a huge can of worms that she had no intentions of opening, though.

“If you’re a liar, you’re a very convincing one,” she admitted. She couldn’t even get rightfully enraged without the universe throwing her a curveball, huh? “All right, keep it. Not that you need my permission.”

With a satisfied smile, he put away the book. “Will you get in trouble?”

“Why do you—” She cut herself short. Not worth asking. “No, I’ll blame you if anybody notices,” she replied. “Al—”

“Not a word.”

“Thank you.” She nodded, and then looked at the pirate once again. “Well, Mr. Trafalgar, it’s been…” Not exactly a pleasure. “Interesting.”

A short laugh escaped him. She had to wonder if it was the alcohol what had him in such high spirits. “Leaving so soon?”

“What, you steal from my workplace and want me to stay for the party?” She asked with incredulity.

“Is it theft if you’re allowing it, though?”

The gall of this dude. “No, thank—”

Suddenly, a red haired man wearing sunglasses indoors and a white jumpsuit entered the scene, putting an arm around Law’s shoulders. “Hey, Captain! Who’s the girl?”

“She’s…”

“A librarian,” she offered. “Just a librarian.”

“Oooh, _the_ librarian!”

“…What—”

“Penguin, come here! It’s the librarian!”

His friend, who wore a cap with the word ‘penguin’ on it that concealed his eyes, but otherwise was dressed exactly like him, walked up to them, “Nice to meet ya!” He wave at her. “You’ve got guts!”

She sensed her chance to make a swift exit was gone. “I think I’m a little lost.”

“Captain said you opened the library just for him.”

“Oh. That.” She was still regretting that. She should have never woken up. Sundays were meant for sleeping. “That’s not guts, it’s being a dumbass.”

The two men laughed, and the first said, “Aren’t they the same?”

She tilted her head, conceding the point. The tilt of their voices was similar to the captain’s, she noticed. Northerners, too. She felt small thinking that they had travelled from practically the opposite side of the world until she remembered she had done the same. The difference was that she had managed to make it boring.

“So what brings you here?” Penguin asked. “Come for a drink after work?”

“No, not really, I was just about to—”

“Come on, have a drink with us!”

“Um, I should really—”

“You live here for long?” The redhead intervened. “I wanna hear about this town. Is it as boring as it looks? Because we’ve been trying to find something to do since we got here.”

“There has to be something.”

Alex smiled a little despite herself, feeling their plight until she remembered the Poneglyph in the archive. “There’s nothing at all.” She turned her head to look at the tables for a moment, hopefully find an excuse to escape. As expected, she saw about a dozen people dressed in the same kind of uniform as those two, but she did a double take when she saw someone clad in orange.

There was the polar bear again, toasting with his friends.

“Is he a mink?” He asked the guys, who grinned at her. She saw Law hide a smile behind his glass before returning his attention to the bear.

He was laughing as he lifted a companion from a chair one handed. Everyone looked so… happy.

“Woah!” Penguin exclaimed. “Second person—”

“ _Third_.”

“Right, third – third person who’s realized what he is since coming to the Grand Line!”

Not surprising. She had never seen any so far from the Red Line. “Is he part of your crew?”

“Yeah, Bepo’s our friend.”

“And our navigator,” Law added.

Aw. Oh, she was getting soft with age.

“Wait here,” said the redhead, “we’ll introduce you!”

“Oh, no need, we already—”

But the two were gone before she could finish her excuse and leave. She supposed there wasn’t any harm in staying a while. She had already demolished her life in a matter of hours, and she didn’t see how this could make it worse. They seemed friendly people, even if their captain was kind of an ass.

“I never thought I’d see the day,” she said quietly, more to herself than anybody else.

Law replied, though. “There aren’t many of them around.”

“No, I’ve seen minks before. I meant a free one.”

Law regarded her with a brand interest that she hadn’t received from him yet. “Are you talking about slaves?”

“You’re headed to the Sabaody Archipelago, right?”

“Eventually.”

“Be careful. Minks aren’t safe there.”

He snorted. “I assure you Bepo can take care of himself.”

Raising her eyebrows at her dismissal, “Don’t underestimate what those people are willing to do to get their hands on a novelty slave.”

“How do you know? Have you been there?”

For longer than she had ever expected to. “Some time ago,” she replied noncommittally. “And it’s dangerous enough for boring people with the kidnapping crews, the human auction, the Celestial Dragons and the Marines so close. You already stand out, but your friend? Keep an eye on him.”

He sounded disgruntled when he said, “You don’t need to tell me,” but it sounded as close to a concession as she thought she was going to get from him.

“Coffee?” Al interrupted to offer one to her. He already had a press in hand.

“Sure,” she said, giving in. She wasn’t going anywhere soon, it seemed, so she climbed on a barstool. “How did you even meet him?” She asked Law, who seemed amused by her interest in his friend. “Don’t they live in the New World?”

“North Blue. We met eleven years ago.”

That was about the last answer she expected. “He’s been with you all along? Wow.”

She felt kind of jealous. She didn’t have any friends from when she was a child. She knew people, sure. A lot of people. Some she liked, many she’d rather not have met at all. A couple of true friends here and there, but no one close by. As much as she enjoyed being alone, and she couldn’t recall a moment in her life she’d felt lonely, she had to wonder how it was like to have such good friends around all the time. It sounded exhausting and fun.

“Yeah,” he agreed, though she hadn’t expected him to, and the admission made her smile a little. “My thoughts exactly.”


	2. domino

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> An interlude in the city of water.

_The sun pounds down with criminal intent as Alex and her friend run across the terrace of Mrs. Isabel’s monumental house. They are adventurers this time, or maybe pirates. It doesn’t matter. The reflection of the light on the colorful tiles and whitewashed buildings is blinding, and her friend’s blonde hair makes her glow like she’s wearing a crown woven with sunlight. They are wearing matching pendants of stone that she picked for them while she was on a trip._

_Laughing, her friend turns to Alex with a toy chest between her hands, but Alex can’t hear the sounds coming from her mouth and her face is a featureless blur that she can’t make sense of. Who’s this person? The stress of not being able to focus on her face makes the image vanish into white, then black, then…_

When Alex woke up, she vaguely remembered dreaming about home, so she didn’t give it much thought. She very rarely remembered dreams, and dreams related to the past were the worst because they were filled with people she hadn’t seen in years, so she wasn’t going to make an effort to recall only to feel bad.

Getting up with a lot effort, she remembered she had gone straight to bed as soon as she got home the day before and she needed a shower. She groaned as she undressed and dropped on the nightstand the seastone pendant she usually wore under her clothes. It was a small, useless thing that may have at some point been used as a bullet and repurposed, but it was a gift from a family friend, and she liked how it looked. A good luck charm of sorts that clearly wasn’t doing its job.

The shower seemed to stretch to infinity as she reviewed the events of the previous day and what she needed to do from then on. She wished _that_ had been a dream. If only things were always that easy.

True to word, the pirates had left with the rising sun. Alex didn’t get to see their ship, even though the first thing she did that morning was go to the port to sneak a glance and contemplate the fish-shaped submarine in its entire tacky splendor. She’d always liked watching ships, ever since she was a kid and sat down at the beach or near the shipyard to see them from up close.

The following weeks were a haze of bureaucracy and preparations to leave her post at the library. She booked a ticket for a passenger ship to the city-island of St. Poplar with the intention of catching another ship from there that could sail her to the Sabaody Archipelago. Then she’d need to request permission to cross the Red Line, and once she was there, well, it wasn’t like she was in a big hurry to return home. But if she didn’t enter the New World soon, there was a chance that once the Poneglyph was be discovered and she’d be held up as soon as she set foot on holy land.

Nearly a month and a half had passed by the time she was able to get all her ducks in a row: training her replacement at work, sending letters to friends and family telling them she was moving, as well as shipping a couple of boxes to the Sabaody Archipelago. When that was done, Alex spent the longest three weeks of her life inside that passenger ship, trapped in a vessel wondering where the heck was her life going, but after several stops along the way, in a very early morning, she arrived to Saint Poplar. She had about a month to go until the renovations started and she became officially a fugitive. Probably. The fact that she wouldn’t be able to know if she was overreacting unless shit hit the fan didn’t help her feel secure in any decision she took, but hey, if she was wrong and nothing happened in the end, she could always go back to Duster Town.

The first thing she did upon arrival was consult the ship schedules at the port. Several pages with timetables were tacked to a board with a glass cover. It was better kept than most information boards she had come across, but it was to be expected, since Saint Poplar and the surrounding islands were popular tourist spots.

By the looks of it, she had missed the last direct ship to Marineford by two days, and the next one wasn’t scheduled yet because there was an Aqua Laguna alert. _Joy._ She had to explain her predicament to a few locals until one of the women working at the port gave her something useful to work with.

“There should still be a liner leaving Water 7 in a few days. They usually wait until the last day so as many people as possible can leave the island before the sea gets too rough.”

Alex took this information as well as one would take a knee to the solar plexus. Another trip meant more money wasted. It was becoming increasingly evident that she’d have to pick up a job somewhere before she was able to cross the Red Line, because safe passage required money. Lots of it. And unless she robbed a bank, she didn’t think she’d be able to get it before the archive renovation started. She had a gun. And she entertained the idea for the entirety of two seconds before coming back to reality.

“Okay,” she said. If nothing else, she’d be able to sightsee. That was an island she had wanted to visit for a long time. “Do you know where can I take a ship to Water 7?”

“There are no ships to Water 7,” the lady replied, amused. “There’s the Sea Train.”

“Oh! I forgot.” It was very much like her to know the Sea Train was a thing and not remember that it had an actual purpose, besides making a city famous. “Is the station far from here, or…?”

“No, it’s…” She looked below the ship schedules in front of them. There was a faded map of the city behind the glass. She pointed one spot, on the opposite side of the city. It was mostly a straight line from where she was if she followed the main streets. “Here. It’s easy to find.”

She had to resist the temptation to pull out of her backpack a fountain pen and draw the map on the back of her hand, since she didn’t trust her memory all that much, and instead she said, “Thank you very much!”

The woman smiled at her, lifted a crate bigger than Alex without breaking a sweat, and went on her merry way. Meanwhile, she spent the following minutes staring intensely at the map to make completely sure that she wasn’t going to take a wrong turn even though there were absolutely no turns to make. Anxiety was a _wonderful_ condition.

By the time she started moving, she was looking at the next hours in a different light. As inconvenient as this detour was, Alex felt more excited than anything else at the idea of riding a Sea Train and going to the city where it originated. She’d seen the pictures, and it was supposed to be all canals that the locals navigated with little boats instead of wheeled vehicles. May as well enjoy the trip as much as she could, right? 

Humming as she went, the trek across the St. Poplar brought her through streets of stone lined with tall buildings, some made of that same stone, but most of them in a more polished classical style. The pediments she saw suggested fifteenth century, so not too old. The less ostentatious houses were brick painted in light tones, with planters hanging from balconies that added little splashes of color to the otherwise muted palette and, in the case of those that were more worn out, provided the exciting possibility of said planters falling on a passerby’s head. Better to stay away from some of those cornices, too.

The atmosphere more than made up for the stoning risk, though. The city was as lively as it could be, and she found herself wishing that she had an excuse to remain in it for a little longer, but it was not to be. Come to think of it, wasn’t there a huge carnival going on in San Faldo around those dates? That explained the people walking around in costumes and elaborate masks. If she ever got to go on vacation again, she was making this area of Paradise her priority.

But if an Aqua Laguna was approaching, she needed to be out of its range as soon as possible, or she risked getting stranded in a place highly frequented by government employees where she could be spotted without backup. Moving swiftly was a priority until she could settle down and lay low to see how the situation unfolded.

She took longer to get to her destination than if she hadn’t kept getting distracted with every little thing that caught her attention, but eventually she was greeted by a platform and a white-gray building with a sign that identified it as Spring Station. She looked out to the sea, unable to see anything at first, until she noticed a shadow beneath the water. Railways swayed back and forth with the waves, a feat of engineering that she wouldn’t have believed had the train not been functional for over ten years. It even connected directly with Enies Lobby, so it had to be reliable. The government wouldn’t be using it to routinely transport their own people otherwise.

She walked into the station and headed straight to the timetable next to the ticket window. There were people sitting inside with bags, and many of them in costume. She wished she could spare the money and the time to join in, or at least run her hands over the velvety fabrics and intricate embroidery. She had done her fair share of sewing and the construction and materials of the costumes were seamstress porn.

The train was scheduled for departure in two hours. Better not to wander too far.

* * *

There were many people inside Alex’s car, some dressed in regular clothes, some in costume. She would have liked to sit next to the window, but she was stuck in an aisle seat, and though she wasn’t uncomfortable by any means, she lamented having to spend the trip looking at her feet instead of the sea.

The seats were really nice, though. She wondered how luxurious first class had to be, if her butt was already on velvet and her feet on fluffy carpet. That was where the government agents must go, since when they stopped at Enies Lobby, nobody entered her car or the adjacent ones, judging by the lack of noise.

About an hour passed without incident until she noticed a faint smell, like smoke, and soon after, someone spoke through the PA system.

“Dear passengers, we inform you that the Sea Train is going to make an unscheduled stop at Shift Station for maintenance. The new hour of arrival to Water 7 will be 12 PM. We are sorry for the inconvenience. You may leave your seats until it’s time to resume the voyage.”

Varying degrees of protests filled the car, but Alex couldn’t say she minded. The train was starting to get stuffy with so many people, and she sensed an incoming headache from the nonstop chatter of the group across the aisle.

A scarce minute later, the train reduced its speed until it came to a halt, and immediately after, a stewardess appeared to unlock the doors. Alex decided to get up, find out in what kind of place this Shift Station was, and stretch her legs, because the seat may have been velvet, but the cushion under it was long flattened. First class was hoarding the good ones for sure.

The smell of saltwater hit her in the face with the subtlety of a Buster Call. She was very confused at how much water she was seeing until she realized that the station was little more than a platform on each side of the rails, a lighthouse, and a house in the middle of the ocean.

There wasn’t much to see once the first impression wore off, though she could have easily spent hours just watching the hypnotic swaying of the waves. There had always been something drawing her to it. She thought about how terrifying it had to be getting caught there during a storm, and how solid the little house on the platform must have been to still be standing there for a decade. The station master, if there was one, had to have nerves of steel.

Since she had nothing else to do, she stretched and began to pace around the platform, watching the passengers who had also gotten off the train. Not too many, considering the amount of people that were travelling in it, but she had to admit the platform amidst the waves was not for the faint of heart. She was certainly not going to get close to the edge. She saw mostly the same types of people she had been sitting with, but from the first car appeared a group dressed in expensive clothing and another of men in black suits.

She did a double take when she saw a familiar World Government insignia on the lapels of their jackets. Embroidery work was wasted on those people. They were Cipher Pol agents, and while their presence was more than reasonable, they still put her on edge. Best not to get close. How did one try their hardest to not look guilty without looking even guiltier?

Faced with this unsolvable conundrum, she diverted her gaze to look anywhere but at them, and out of the corner of her eye she noticed one of them look in her direction for a moment before going back to their conversation. Slowly and innocently, if steps could be walked in such a way, she ducked into the building and decided to keep to the shadows until the train was ready to go. Out of sight, out of mind, they said, and in case she actually became a fugitive, she didn’t need to be remembered by a member of an intelligence agency.

The fresh air was nice, though. Definitely worth sharing her vital space with government agents for a few minutes.

“Chimney got clogged again, didn’t it?”

Alex wanted to jump out of her skin when she suddenly heard a voice behind her, but the upside of being in a constant state of mild anxiety was that she just tensed up very hard when she got spooked. Shoulders squared and butt firmly clenched, she turned around to see an old woman with a grin so wide that it dipped into the uncanny valley. She was stocky, with lime green hair tied in braids, and wore a hat with Water 7’s initials that probably meant she worked there.

This was not how Alex had expected the station master to look, and if she had had it in her to worry about complete strangers, she would have been concerned about the woman’s safety.

A small girl with lips and hair conspicuously similar to the woman’s spoke up from behind her, annoyed. “I didn’t! I’ve been going every day!”

The older woman laughed loudly. “I meant the train, not you!”

The girl huffed and left, but the older woman stayed.

Now that she was facing her, her breath hit Alex, and it reeked of alcohol. Oh dear. She hoped the woman didn’t have a terribly important job there. She didn’t get what was so funny about the exchange, but she didn’t want to ask, either.

“I don’t know,” she replied with hesitation, realizing she had been asked a question. “They just told us we were going to stop for a while.”

“It happens sometimes.” She said. The grin was perpetually etched in her face. “They made the chimney too long, but Tom always said it looked nicer that way. You’d think Iceburg would have more sense once he took over, but he says he doesn’t want to change it.”

As soon as those names were dropped, Alex’s brain began to try and make connections like a madman with a wall covered in papers trying to make sense of a conspiracy theory. She didn’t know if the woman was assuming she knew who those people were or she was so drunk that she didn’t care.

Fortunately for Alex, she did know, marginally, who she was referring to – Iceburg, Water 7’s current mayor, was famous worldwide thanks to the Galley-La Company, and by Tom she assumed she meant the man who designed the original sea train. That name would have escaped her, had not a number of coincidences engraved it in her mind.

She couldn’t say if Tom had been forgotten as a relic of a past era or forcibly ejected from public memory as a result of being connected to Gold Roger and ever-present racism. He was a genius inventor, the one who put Water 7 on the world map by building the Sea Train, and the world returned the favor by executing him.

Most executions relating to the Pirate King had happened when Alex was still very young and didn’t pay much attention to anything that went on outside of her immediate vicinity, but Tom’s happened much later, when she was twenty and being aware of the world’s geopolitics was an indispensable part of her studies. They granted him a few more years to finish the Sea Train, and everybody back then had been convinced that his service would be repaid with a pardon, but that wasn’t how the World Government worked.

Unstoppable in their mission to purge every little thing that remained of Roger, they eliminated the man who built the Oro Jackson. Alex’s friend opened a bottle of his wife’s good whiskey, and then another, and suddenly it was four in the morning with him slurring and sobbing on the table, and his wife was halfway through the second pack of cigarettes of the night and Alex was so drunk in solidarity too that it was a good thing that her chair had a sturdy back and armrests, because otherwise she was pretty sure she’d have slid to the sticky floor and stayed there listening to old stories. He had a killer hangover the next day and Alex was just sleepy because young bodies were capable of amazing things, and then everything seemed to return to normal.

That had been a bad year, and a combination of everything happening at once and managing to torpedo her own academic career meant that putting it behind wasn’t an easy thing to do. Aside from Tom’s execution bringing down the mood considerably and her own personal problems, passage through the Red Line was also shut for months after queen Otohime’s assassination, meaning that Alex couldn’t return home at the time the country was going through the worst political unrest in centuries, and even if she had been free to go, the long absence would have made her flunk the year and lose her scholarship. Alex remembered that year like one remembered a fever nightmare: fuzzy, never ending, with huge gaps in the middle, yet sinking its claws so deep within that it was just a mention or reminder away from resurfacing. Sabaody got worse around that time, too, due to Doflamingo’s rise to Shichibukai and king status. His auction house started operating in the archipelago while Marines looked the other way, and kidnapping crews grew in number and activity.

All in all, not the best time of her life. In fact, current technically-not-on-the-run Alex was still faring so much better than past Alex that the thought wrapped around from depressing to funny.

She looked at the Sea Train, trying to imagine it with a shorter chimney. Two men were at the top of the smokebox with big brushes. “I can see their point. The proportions would be off.”

The woman must have been in a very good mood, because she chuckled. “I’m not an engineer or an artist, so I can’t say. Why are you here, anyway? Do you need anything?”

“Oh, no, sorry, it’s just—” She thought about the Cipher Pol agents out there. “There’s a lot of people on the platform.”

“And it’s windy, too,” she said, looking at the sky. “People have gotten blown away before, you know.”

“…Oh. That’s good to know, thanks,” she said, timidly taking a step back into the house so she wasn’t being hit by the wind anymore. Alex still had some time to kill and was curious about the woman, and talkative as she was, she assumed she wouldn’t mind a bit of prodding. “You mentioned Iceburg and Tom. Do you know them?”

The laugh that came next didn’t sound as happy as the other ones, somehow. “Know them? I’ve known Iceburg since he was a little brat. Tom was a good friend. Did you know that Iceburg was his apprentice? Not that these people care,” she nudged her head towards the Cipher Pol agents and Alex sank even deeper into the little house. “Tom died so they could save face, but they won’t touch Iceburg because he’s useful. That’s all they mean to them.”

Alex didn’t know very well how to respond, but she felt the need to say something. “I have a friend who said the same. He sailed on one of Tom’s ships years ago.”

The woman looked at Alex, and beyond the drunken stupor, some clarity shined behind her eyes. “Oh? And what did he think about it? Was it smooth sailing?”

Alex smiled just a little bit. “Not really, but he says it was the best ship in the world.”

The woman cackled, happily this time. “Of course it was! He made the best ships! Not even Iceburg or…” She trailed off, and Alex couldn’t tell if she had forgotten where she was going or she had done it on purpose. “Say, are you headed to Water 7?”

“Yes, why?”

“I need you to do me a favor. All this talk’s gotten me nostalgic and the Aqua Laguna will be here any day, so…” The woman walked to a counter, pulled out a notebook, wrote something, tore out the page and kissed it before folding it twice. She waddled back to Alex and gave her the paper. “Give this to Iceburg.”

Alex’s hand froze with the paper already in it. “I… don’t think I can do that. Isn’t he famous? How am I supposed to meet him?”

The woman brushed her concerns off like nothing, and Alex’s nerves didn’t appreciate that. “Nah, it’s not a problem. Go to Dock 1 in the afternoon, he’s usually there avoiding official duty. Tell them Kokoro sent you. That should be enough.”

“Okay…?” She said, still unsure. “I won’t promise anything, though.”

“No need for promises, just deliver it. I need a drinking buddy.” And she added, “You should go to Blueno’s bar while you’re there. The booze is cheap and the food is good, and that isn’t something you can’t say about many places in the city.”

“Oh?” This new topic was interesting. “Is it very expensive?”

Kokoro laughed. “You’ll see when you get there.”

That sounded ominous for her budget, and Alex didn’t feel too good about this ordeal she had been roped into because the last thing she wanted to do was enable an alcoholic lady. But maybe Iceburg would look after her…? They were longtime friends, according to her.

At any rate, there wasn’t much point in refusing the errand. If delivering the note happened to be too complicated, she could pass and no one would be none the wiser. Her priority was to find a ship and get to Sabaody the sooner, the better.

And when she was there, maybe tell her friends that she had met a friend of a friend.

* * *

When Alex arrived to Blue station, she had to remind herself that she had several objectives in mind and sightseeing came second. She put on her sunglasses to block out the glare of the sun and its reflection on the water, and looked up.

In front of her stood a colossal city built upwards and turned fountain, with five different levels of construction that culminated in an upwards surge of water. It was collected by a series of canalizations that crossed the city from the top to sea level and divided the second tier in smaller areas.

Water 7 was one of the many independent state-islands in the area, and though not affiliated with the World Government – it hadn’t been a notable location at all, before the Sea Train that ironically connected it to Enies Lobby was put in motion – its globally renowned shipyards often worked on Marine ships and other vessels for people with important positions in the government. It was said that nowhere else in the world could you find better shipwrights than in Water 7, and the man famously acclaimed for it was Iceburg, current mayor and owner of the aforementioned shipyards. He had founded the Galley-La company a few years ago, recruiting the best shipwrights he could find for his behemoth of an enterprise, and it worked. Alex was actually excited to see firsthand what all the fuss was about.

But first things first, and before taking the mysterious note to the mayor, she needed to find the ship that would take her to the Sabaody Archipelago.

She got unnecessarily lost several times inside the labyrinth of canals and side streets because she refused to walk up to people and ask, but eventually, she found the Grand Canal of the island and the harbor where most ships docked.

It didn’t take her long to mind a means of transport, thankfully. The passenger ship departed the next day in the morning, and with a lot of pain, Alex had to fork over a good chunk of her remaining savings to secure a ticket on such short notice. It wasn’t the end of the world, since, she already counted on having to stay in Sabaody for a while to rebuild her budget, but it stung.

After the more pressing issue was dealt with, she took a walk around the area to find somewhere to eat, maybe try some local specialty, but she felt her hunger vanish when she looked at the prices of the menus outside. Kokoro had been right. What was the place she had mentioned… Bruno’s? Blueno’s? Yeah, that sounded familiar.

Unfortunately, a cursory glance didn’t reveal its location. If it was cheaper, it was probably somewhere less central, and if that was the case, she’d have more luck crossing the bridge to Green Bit unscathed than finding it without assistance.

Face with the unavoidable fact that she had to ask someone if she had any hopes of finding the place, she took a look around and decided she might as well procrastinate on it for as long as she could. She started to walk towards the upper part of the city, the Shipbuilding Island, where the docks were located, or so multiple signposts said. It really drove home that they were the main attraction of the city, more than the canals of the amazing architecture.

Getting there was going to take a while. She could have rented one of those cute Yagara boats, but she was cheap as hell, and, not less importantly, the critters seemed a little overenthusiastic. After the trip, all the walking she had done and the lack of food, she wasn’t in the mood to be social with anybody, human or not.

Maybe she would be lucky and come across Blueno’s place as she went to the shipyards. Yeah. That was a hopeful lie she could hang onto while she forced her body to walk way more than it was used to.

She hummed on her way up, singing to herself when she went through empty streets. As it turned out, the difficulty of reaching the shipyards by foot wasn’t finding the way up, but rather being in the proper sidewalk when she happened upon the next bridge or set of stairs, and after an hour she had lost count of the amount of times she had reached a dead end and had to turn back to the nearest bridge to cross the street and ascend, from the third instance onwards accompanied by a cranky ‘GAAAAH’ as she ran in the right direction. One would have thought this wouldn’t have won her any points with the locals, but she heard a few snickering at her and saying something in a language she didn’t speak but universally translated as ‘hahaha, _tourists_.’

She’d be the first to admit that going up that monumental city while carrying a backpack wasn’t her brightest idea, but she was damned if she was going to cave in at that point and rent the Yagara. She’d wash downstream on the way back if it came to that, but she had to get to the top now by her own means.

The moment she set foot on Shipbuilding island, she walked a few steps away from the staircase to not block it, dropped her backpack, and then her ass next to it to catch her breath.

When she recovered enough to raise her head instead of thinking how miserably sore she was going to be in the morning, she was greeted by an even better view than when she arrived to the Blue Station, and she pushed her glasses up for a moment to better see the colors of the city.

The lowest level of Water 7 extended below her, clusters of white houses and orange roofs covering the entire expanse of the island that wasn’t occupied by the canals. The wind blew harder at that level, too, with less obstacles in its path, since that part of the city was built on a steep incline, and it carried with it the spray of the central fountain, painting a timid rainbow across the sky. She imagined the view at night being just as stunning.

She chose to view this as the reward for her efforts, and then snorted at her the consolation prize of her own making.

As nice as it was to stare at the city and the sky and sea beyond, she was there with a double mission of getting the note to Iceburg and being a little nosy, so she looked at the monumental stone door she had just crossed with the number three painted on it. She was willing to go out on a limb and assume that that wasn’t Dock 1, so she began to circle around the area to find the next one, and once again she had to go the way she had come when she saw the next door had a four. Alex would be the first to agree that the most powerful force in the universe was cosmic irony, but after the sidewalk business while she made her way up there, this seemed a little excessive.

At least the circular shape of the area and the conveniently located bridges allowed her to cross over the canals with ease, saving her from getting lost again, and in a matter of minutes door number one, wide open, came into view.

At first she didn’t know where to go, since each dock could have easily been a town on their own. She began to walk upwards, wondering how was she supposed to find Iceburg and with little intent to go out of her way to find him if she didn’t have luck. A couple of minutes later, she noticed a group of townspeople standing in a half circle and staring at something. Alex decided to approach them and see what was going on. There was a good chance that the mayor himself was attracting the crowd, if he really was as popular as the rumors said.

Standing at a safe distance from the group, she realized that it was composed mostly by women, and she looked at whatever had them so interested. A man with his torso covered in tattoos was carrying a couple of long planks over his shoulder with surprising ease, and another one, farther away, was sawing a tree trunk so big that it couldn’t be for anything but a mast. He caught Alex’s attention because for some reason he was wearing a top hat that clashed horribly with the rest of his outfit and there was a pigeon sitting on a nearby pile of crates and watching him work with surprising focus. None of them, obviously, looked like mayor material.

Alex wasn’t sure what the crowd was doing there until she heard a hushed comment about the shipwright’s arms and being able to break concrete with those. Oh, God, they were there to ogle at the shipwrights? Alex wasn’t nearly straight enough for this. How was that even allowed? She took a step away from them, but by then a cheerful man wearing a tracksuit of questionable taste had noticed the group and acknowledged them with a wave and a smile. One of the girls swooned, and Alex died a little inside, then died some more because she had worked hard on leaving behind her ‘not like the other girls phase’ but the circumstances weren’t helping matters.

The other workers were busy, but the new face seemed to be free at the moment, he looked friendly, and she had come to the conclusion that she’d have to communicate with strangers if Kokoro’s note was to be delivered. She waved back at the man with the paper in her hand and something that resembled urgency on her face. She wasn’t hopeful, but to her surprise, he started to walk towards her. At the same time, the man with the top hat finished the cut he was making and the white pigeon stood up, cooed at tracksuit guy, and flew to rest on the shoulder of his coworker.

“Hattori is so cute,” one of the women said.

Alex didn’t know anymore who of the three was Hattori. She was even more confused when top hat guy passed near his colleague and the pigeon said, “I’ll take care of it.”

“Lucci’s coming our way!” One of the younger girls said, excited.

“Do you think he’ll pick another fight with Paulie today?”

“I hope so! Did you see what his fingers did to the—”

Alright, time to unplug from the conversation. She could guess that Lucci was the name of the man, because she didn’t think a pigeon, no matter how articulate, could inspire so much passion.

The name gave her pause.

Where had she heard it before? It sounded familiar, but she couldn’t place it. Maybe she had heard someone talk about him at some point. He had to be a renowned shipwright if he was working in Dock 1 of Water 7, of all places. 

Lucci was tall, but she didn’t realize just how much until he was right in front of her, staring her down in a way that, in any other context, she’d have assumed meant that he was about to snap her neck. Was he taller than Trafalgar Law, or did the top hat made him look like he was? She only knew that if she ever had the back luck of bumping into the guy, she would likely split her forehead against his pectoral muscles. The man was built like a classical marble statue with facial hair, tattoos, and a serious case of resting bitchface. She could empathize with him on the latter.

“Can I help you?”

Alex didn’t know whether to look at the pigeon or the man, and in a panic, she settled on the man because it felt wiser to not lose sight of him than a bird.

And what a bird. That pigeon was easily the size of her head.

“I met a woman named Kokoro at Shift Station. She asked me to give this note to mayor Iceburg,” she said, showing the folded note to him.

He extended a hand for her to pass the paper, and she wasn’t sure how ethical it was to let another person read a clearly personal note with a kiss stamped on it, but to be quite frank, she didn’t care and he and the close attention his group of fans was making her anxious.

A pair of strangely-shaped eyebrows lifted when he read the message.

“Kokoro?” The bird repeated. There had to be a trick there. That was a pigeon, not a parrot, they weren’t supposed be able to enunciate like humans. It was probably unreasonable of her to revoke her suspension of disbelief due to that when she knew there were so many strange creatures living in the Grand Line, but she had to draw the line somewhere. “Mayor Iceburg is doing his rounds right now. He should be here in a few minutes. You can wait for him over there,” he said, gesturing with a wing at a pile of neatly stacked timber across from where his owner had been working, and Lucci returned the note to her. “Don’t be noisy.”

“I wasn’t going to,” she retorted with a mix of indignation and embarrassment, reflexively taking a step away from him and the group she had just been associated with. The movement telegraphed against her will that she found him intimidating, which only served to embarrass her more. “Thank you.”

There really was no way anybody with functioning eyes could mistake her for one of the group. The ladies looked nice, and Alex looked like… well, she couldn’t tell, but she was glad she didn’t have a mirror on hand, because if she looked as sweaty as she felt, she wasn’t a pretty sight. The boots and big backpack on her back were also clear signs that she wasn’t from around there.

Wordlessly, Lucci returned to his job while Alex was left with the impression that she had just been made fun of, not that anybody could tell by the shipwright’s stony face. She relaxed a little when he left her alone, not in small part due to the attention of the group being lifted from her.

That place was nothing like the shipyards she was used to. Canals ran through it, same as in the city below, and led to other slide-like canalizations that connected to the lower levels. There were a lot of those all around the city, she had noticed, acting as roads for the Yagaras, and, she guessed in the case of the larger ones, to help transport the newly built or repaired ships from the docks to sea level.

Some time had passed when she caught sight of a blue-haired man in a striped suit walking in her general direction, closely followed by a blonde woman with a strict expression, and while he was busy inspecting the work of a shipwright, she noticed Alex was away from the crowd and made a beeline for her.

“Excuse me.” The tone of the pleasantry suggested that it was actually her who was excusing Alex’s presence. “Do you have any business here?”

Alex didn’t enjoy being talked down to, so the reply came out harsher that she meant. “As a matter of fact, I do.” When she realized how snappy she had sounded, she explained quickly, “I was told by Kokoro to deliver a message to mayor Iceburg, and he,” she gestured at Lucci, who was busy with his job and not paying them any mind, with the note, “said I could wait for him here.”

“Did he, now,” she replied, sending a skeptical glance at the man, and she extended her hand towards Alex. Someone must have pissed in her coffee that morning. “Let me see.”

That note was going to places, she thought, but the woman must have found its contents acceptable, because she returned it to Alex and told her, “Wait here.”

Alex was about to start having flashbacks of all the bureaucratic mess involved with her recent move out of Duster Town. The woman went to the man in the suit and directed him towards Alex while she walked over to Lucci to tell him something she wasn’t able to hear because she now had to pay attention to the mayor of the city.

“Hello,” he said, sounding much politer than the woman. “Kalifa tells me you have a message for me.”

It was curious, comparing the old descriptions she had heard of the man with his current appearance. He wouldn’t have been caught dead in a suit twenty years ago, for instance.

“Yes, from Kokoro. Here,” she said, finally giving the note to its intended recipient and feeling like she was set free from a curse.

“Hm?” He opened he note, and after just a split second his face turned into a grimace. “Ugh, gross!”

“Uh, what?” The note had already passed two filters, so she couldn’t imagine what could warrant that reaction.

He showed her the note and Alex read it for the first time. _Same place, same time?_ It said. The lipstick imprint of the kiss was smudged and stained the whole page. Iceburg didn’t waste any time in crumpling the paper and tossing it over his shoulder.

“Thank you for delivering the message.”

“Mr. Iceburg! No littering!” The woman from before warned, but someone else replied to her.

“Don’t speak like that to Mr. Iceburg, you wretched woman! And show some property while you’re in the docks!”

The woman didn’t reply, but she sent a death glare to the man who had spoken up, and Alex could have sworn that she pulled down the zipper of her jacket lower than it already was, drawing an even bigger reaction from him.

“Nmaa, don’t mind them,” Iceburg said, sounding bored. You don’t seem to be from around here. Are you visiting?”

“Just passing by before the Aqua Laguna comes,” she replied. “But I wish I could stay longer.”

He smiled with something akin to pride. “It’s a good city, isn’t it? What have you seen so far?”

“Oh, well, I walked around the Grand Canal and the shopping district earlier, and I saw a bit of the city while I walked up here, but—”

“You walked here?”

Oh, this was so awkward. She should have tossed that note into the sea. “I’m a historian,” she replied, because that was an excuse that always curbed people’s curiosity. “I wanted to take my time exploring.”

“If that’s the case, have you seen the maritime museum yet? It’s near the Grand Canal, and there’s a showcase about the origins of the city right now.”

She wasn’t a big fan of museums, truth be told, but professional habit compelled her to go anyway. The list of places she had to visit didn’t seem to shrink. “No, but I’ll be sure to—Oh, that reminds me!” Might as well ask while she had his attention, she thought. “Kokoro recommended going to Blueno’s bar while I was here. Where can I find it?”

“Ah, good idea!” Iceburg’s face lit up. “Let’s see, what can we do… Since you don’t have a Yagara, let me ask Kalifa if she has a map of—”

“No need, Mr. Iceburg.” Someone else piped up. “It’s time for my break, so I can show her.”

The guy in the tracksuit from before was walking up to them, showing a warm smile.

“That would be perfect,” Iceburg replied, and the said to Alex. “This is one of our foremen, Kaku.”

“Pleased to make your acquaintance.”

Kaku looked young and sounded old at once. “Likewise,” Alex replied. “I’m Alex.”

“Well then, Alex,” he said in a suspiciously cheerful tone. “I don’t have long, so we’ll have to get there in a jiffy. Are you ready?”

As ready as she was ever going to be until she had a good night’s sleep. “Sure. Whenever you…”

A not so inoffensive grin spread on Kaku’s face and he broke into a sprint in Alex’s direction, so fast that she couldn’t duck from his path before he threw an arm around her, easily lifting her from the floor, extra weight from the backpack and all, and he kept running toward the edge of the level and jumped.

She thought she yelled, but she couldn’t hear her own voice against the roar of the wind in her ears and her blood pressure rising at the absolute certainty that she was going to become a pancake, the only doubt being whether she’d be dry or wet at the bottom of a canal.

On reflex, she grabbed tightly onto the only thing available, which was Kaku’s arm firmly wrapped around her torso, and her grip was met with stone hard muscle. _What was up with these shipwrights?_

She saw Dock 1 get smaller and smaller at breakneck speed as she fell backwards, and she braced for impact and shut her eyes as the first rooftop approached, but they didn’t crash against it because Kaku did _something_ before he hit it. She felt it in the shift of his body, like he had bounced off the surface.

Alex paid more attention to his feet after she realized she wasn’t going to die splattered against a rooftop, and the second time she saw it: right before his shoes touched the roof tiles, he jumped again, stepping on air, effectively creating the illusion that he was jumping from building to building.

The adrenaline-fueled fear of impending doom was suddenly replaced by cold dread.

She had seen _that_ before. She knew what _that_ was.

A civilian couldn’t possibly know how to do _that_.

So who was the man carrying her right now? The only thing separating her from certain death? Could he have learned to do that anywhere else or could it be a different technique? There was always a chance that he was retired, but he was so young, and already so skilled, and she knew for a fact that the Marines didn’t like letting go of those.

…Marines?

Where… where had she heard the name Lucci, again…?

She had to be imagining things, for sure, but she also had a strong feeling that she needed to take her leave from the island as soon as possible. She was sleeping with a gun under her pillow that night.

With a few last hops, Kaku landed on firm ground and Alex thanked her lucky stars when he put her down safely. She felt lightheaded, and wasn’t sure if it was because of the sudden freefall or that her all-consuming paranoia had her doubting the intentions of one of Galley-La’s foremen, which sounded increasingly stupid the longer her feet where in contact with solid stone.

“Here we are,” he said, gesturing at something behind Alex’s back.

Her reaction was slow, but when she turned around, she saw a door with a big red sign above that said _Blueno’s_.

She felt a pang of guilt for being afraid of the guy when he had done her a huge favor, albeit in a kind of dickish way. Dock 1 was a good ways away, and she would have given up if she had had to walk there. She looked at him and admitted, “That was pretty cool once I got over the heart attack.”

She still sounded kind of breathless and didn’t know if asking how he had learned to extreme parkour was a good idea.

Kaku laughed with joy that rang true. “My apologies about that. I rarely ever have company on the way down.”

She tried to picture Kaku grabbing Lucci the same way he had done to her and jumping down, and her brain broke during the attempt. “Yeah, I can’t imagine that colleague of yours with the top hat jumping down the…” She trailed off, interrupted by her own thoughts and questions about that other guy, and the pause became awkward. “Anyway—”

“You can ask,” he said, smiling.

She jumped at the opportunity. “Is he a ventriloquist?”

“It’s a hobby,” Kaku replied, amused, as he pushed the door open. “Ladies first.”

Alex didn’t know what it was with every strange man he came across lately that their courtesies sounded vaguely threatening, but she entered the venue, nonetheless.

It was much nicer than she had expected. The bartender was a wide man with a circle beard and hair sticking out like horns, and he was appropriately wiping a set of glasses behind the counter, like every barman should during their first introduction.

“Good afternoon, Blueno!” Kaku greeted him before Alex could say anything, going inside after her.

“Same as always?”

“Please.” He leaned against the bar. Alex sat on a barstool near him and tried to be emotionally ready to be the third wheel in two strangers’ interaction. “Oh, and something for the others, too. Whatever it is. We’re finishing a big repair today and you know how it goes.”

“Is it the Marine warship?”

“A windjammer for a private client. Working metal is a pain, and they want it yesterday.” He sounded displeased for the first time since they had met. “You can’t rush a good job.”

“The customer is never right,” Blueno agreed.

Kaku raised an eyebrow at him. “I hope that wasn’t directed at me.”

“Of course not,” Blueno’s reply sounded paternalistic. Alex could sense the history behind these two. “It’s odd to see you with someone else.”

Kaku put aside his mild annoyance to introduce her. “She’s Alex. She was visiting the shipyards and I brought her along on my way down.”

“Hi,” she said, looking for any other words she had learned during the course of her life and drawing a blank. Someone kill her, please.

“I see. I thought the landing sounded heavier than usual,” Blueno observed.

“Attentive as always.” Kaku commended him. “But what an awful thing to say to a young lady. She’s light as a two-by-four.”

“No offense meant,” Blueno said to her in good humor. “It’s part of the job.”

“None taken, I’m at least a four-by-four.”

There was a hint of a smile, on his face when he asked, “What will you have?”

“Whatever you recommend. I haven’t eaten since I woke up.”

“Can you believe she walked all the way to Dock 1 to sightsee?” Kaku chuckled. “I didn’t think historians were the sporty types.”

“You heard that?”

“I have pretty good hearing, too.”

“I can’t imagine what type of madman wouldn’t ride a Yagara to make that trip,” Blueno replied. No doubts about who he had in mind this time. “A historian, huh? I suppose this city’s fairly old.”

“The architecture’s really interesting.” She replied, finally reaching a topic that she could talk about. Though she was a bit concerned that they knew what she was because Suspicious Foreman was suspicious, she didn’t see what harm could come of it. “It’s impressive to think this is all supported by wood pillars.”

“They keep sinking year by year, though. At this rate, there won’t be a city in a few decades,” Kaku said, surprisingly grim.

“Thanks for showing me the rooftops while they’re still visible, then,” Alex joked in a weak attempt to bring his good mood back.

It worked. He had such a cute smile. “You’re more than welcome.” He turned to the bartender. “Now then, Blueno…”

“Right away,” the man replied, going into the kitchen and leaving Alex and Kaku alone for a few minutes.

A companionable silence, until Kaku broke it and his question put Alex on edge again. “Where do historians in the making study nowadays, if you don’t mind me asking?”

“Marineford, mostly. There aren’t many places left.” The same people offering the current curriculum had made sure of it.

“And what drives someone so young to be so interested in history?”

She had been asked that question so many times, and the real answer was always curiosity. To learn the truths that shaped the present. She had the folder with the Poneglyph transcript in her backpack to account for that.

But even partial truths could be dangerous given her current situation, so she replied, “I could ask the same of you. How does someone so young get so good at building ships?”

There was a flash of surprise in his face at the question being turned against him. It was quickly substituted by one of his smiles, but Alex had the impression that he was very aware that she was deflecting on purpose. “I’ve liked them since I was a kid,” he said. “I couldn’t tell you why.”

She shrugged, mirroring his smile. “There’s your answer.”

He laughed lightly and turned to look at the bottles behind the bar with an amused expression. He didn’t insist or say anything else, and the more at ease he looked, the more anxious Alex grew.

It wasn’t long until Blueno showed up again with a bag full of sandwiches wrapped in paper in one hand and a towering plate of pasta with black sauce on the other that she set in front of Alex.

“Thanks,” Kaku said, putting the money on the counter and grabbing the bag. “See you later.” And he faced Alex one last time, lifting his cap a little in a polite gesture and revealing a blonde mass of curls. “It’s been a pleasure. Good luck on your travels.”

“Thank you!”

He left the bar, and his departure added to the leaning tower of pasta made her think that her day was starting to look up until she remembered that she had only mentioned she was leaving soon to Iceburg.

How long had he been listening in?

* * *

She couldn’t sleep.

Despite her misgivings, the rest of the day had passed without incident. She booked a room for the night at an inn off the beaten path that Blueno had recommended, checked out the maritime museum, and nearly fallen asleep after half an hour because that was the effect that, sadly, most museums had on her. But she did see an old picture next to a Sea Train model of Tom, his two apprentices, and the master of Shift Station.

Time didn’t wait for anybody, she thought as she flexed her aching hands.

She ended up walking around again, this time only through the lowest district, rejecting even the mere sight of stairs, and saw a cape where someone had built the weirdest and most colorful house of the city. Near it was a scrapyard, and though she had no intentions of going close to either, a couple of locals told her to watch her belongings while she was there. It was a bit nostalgic.

It was difficult to believe, she thought as she stared at the ceiling of her room, that such a vibrant city was sinking under its own weight, and that as soon as the sea swallowed it, there would be nothing but stories being told about it. Maybe that was how those legends of ancient islands that disappeared came to be. Maybe Water 7 would become a legend to, a few centuries down the line.

She fidgeted with the stone around her neck, a nervous habit had for as long as she’d been wearing it. It was better than biting her nails, at least, but it looked weird when she wore it inside her clothes and unconsciously reached for it, so she did her best to avoid it.

She was very tired and sore from all that walking, but try as she might, she couldn’t turn off her thoughts. After way too much tossing and turning, she decided she would rather see more of the city than waste her time in bed. She could catch up on sleep when she boarded the ship to Sabaody, anyway.

She picked up the same pair of jeans she had been wearing all day, the black tank top she usually wore under her sweaters, and tossed around her shoulders the same red shawl she used to wear like a scarf in Harlun. It wasn’t cold outside, but the night breeze was somewhat chilly. Better safe than sorry.

She debated whether to pick up the gun in her backpack or leave it there, and she decided on the former. A present from her father when she came of age for the sake of her safety, and one she had never liked.

It wasn’t too late yet, only a few minutes past 10 PM, and there was still a healthy flow of people on the streets. Alex made her way to one of the many Yagara rental shops still open and paid for one of the small ones. There she went, defeating her own purpose like the hypocrite she was.

“One question,” she told the shop owner as she settled on the boat, “Are the docks open at this hour?”

“They usually leave the doors open, yeah. Sometimes there’s people working at night.” He replied. “Why, you want to go now?”

“I was thinking of checking out the view from the highest part of the city.”

“That so? Then you just need to go up one of the main canals in the Shipbuilding Island.”

“Thanks!” She said, and then patted the Yagara on the head. It was cold, wet and scaly. “Can you bring me to Dock 1? There’s no hurry.” She had seen one of them speeding through a canal early and she was not ready for that.

The Yagara uttered a high-pitched guttural sound that no fishlike creature had any business doing and started to swim at a relaxed pace.

Alex didn’t know how long it took them to get to their destination, distracted as she was watching the city from a different viewpoint, but the higher they went, the less people that seemed to be out. By the time they reached Dock 1, the area was devoid of human presence, and all the ship parts and materials Alex had seen in the morning had been either moved somewhere safer or covered by tarps to protect them from the weather.

The Yagara continued its slow ascent through the canal that separated Dock 1 and 2, and the base of the fountain wasn’t too far when she heard hammering sounds. Someone was still working.

Curiosity, as was usual, got the best of her and she told the Yagara to slow down. Whoever was there also noticed her presence, because the hammering stopped.

A man stepped under the light of a streetlight, hammer in hand, to check out the canal, and Alex realized with surprise that he was none other than Water 7’s mayor, though he had shed the jacket and shirt. He was wearing only an undershirt with those awful striped pants from before and business shoes.

“Who’s there?” He asked.

Alex realized the light didn’t reach her, so he was probably just seeing a shadow, and in the deserted dock it had to be more than a little unnerving. She nudged the Yagara towards the light and replied, “It’s me from before! Sorry to interrupt, I was just passing by!”

Iceburg looked at her with interest and approached her, so she thought it was only polite to step out of the boat.

“Where are you going at this hour?” He asked, stopping at arm’s length of her.

“I was trying to get to the top of the city.” She smiled apologetically. “I’m sightseeing.”

He relaxed upon hearing the explanation, and with a smile, he said, “Glad to see that the scare from earlier didn’t kill you.”

It was official, everybody in Dock 1 had decided to pick on her. “It could have!” She replied. “Does he do that often?”

“Jumping? Yes, but most of the time he doesn’t take people with him. He did it to Paulie once and he was foaming at the mouth when they landed. Never heard the end of it for a week.“ The fondness with which he spoke betrayed that he hadn’t minded the aftermath as much as the words suggested.

She didn’t know who Paulie was, but he was justified in being upset. She also thought that it was nice to meet a boss that seemed to appreciate his workers. “I don’t see other shipwrights around. Are you working here alone?”

“Nmaa…” he started lazily, “I sent them home. The heavy lifting was done; I can finish it myself.”

Iceburg may have been a shipwright before becoming president of the company, but Alex hadn’t expected him to do manual labor when he had paid other people for it. “The windjammer?”

“Kaku told you?” He sounded pleased, and he answered the unspoken question from before. She assumed he got it a lot. “My day job is meetings, papers and ass kissing all day long. I prefer this.”

This was much easier to reconcile with the stories she had heard of Water 7. “I can’t say I’d mind the papers, but the rest sounds exhausting.”

“Bodies need to move. Weren’t you doing field research today?”

“By accident.” She couldn’t help the smile that appeared on her face. He was easy to talk to, and seeing this side of him, she didn’t feel like she had to watch her words so much. “I’m trying to find a way home. Train and ship schedules brought me here.”

“You chose a difficult time of the year to sail. Is it far away?”

She nodded lightly. “It’s still a ways away.” Nonetheless, she was glad for this detour. Maybe that was why she found the courage to say, “I have a friend who came to this city about twenty years ago. He said you worked on his ship.”

Maybe it was because she lost filters when she was tired.

“Is that so?” He said, curious. “I’ve worked in many ships. Things were very different back then.” He glanced away, at the district that had only taken this shape a few years ago, thanks to him. “Did the ship do its job?”

She wondered what to say. Nothing that could do it justice, for sure. “Brought them to the end of the world, in fact.”

She wished she had been there to see it.

Iceburg’s eyes widened with surprise, and after a short, contemplative silence, he said, “That ship took much from us.” There was hurt in his voice. “I think Tom knew it would be one of his last, so he put his everything in it. He would have done anything for his friends.”

It was easy to forget that every great story had real people behind it. “Sorry for bringing it up.”

He shook his head. “We never regretted it, so… don’t. It was a magnificent ship. Tom’s best work, after the Sea Train.” He paused. “Is your friend okay?”

“Doing alright for sure. He’d be all over the papers if something happened to him.”

“That’s good to hear.” A smile that reached his eyes came back only to morph into a sigh in an instant. “Well, I need to go back to…”

“Of course!” She said very quickly. “Sorry for holding you up. It was a pleasure to meet you.” And to put a face to the stories, too.

“I should say the same,” he said, and it didn’t sound like an empty pleasantry. “Fair winds on the way back home.”

“Thank you.”

As he started to walk away, Alex hopped back on the boat and pulled the shawl tighter around her. Perhaps she should have put on a jacket, after all.

The view from the top of the district was as spectacular as she had hoped.

* * *

She wasn’t sure how she got up from bed the next morning. Must have been the fairies that pushed her upright, because everything hurt and she was so exhausted that she couldn’t even open her eyes after a thorough face wash. Somehow, she managed to drag her feet to the dining room and have a light breakfast. Bless the laziness that had prevented her from changing into her pajamas again before she dropped on the bed when she returned from the docks, because she didn’t think she’d have been able to stick her legs in the right holes of the jeans.

She returned to her room, triple checked to make sure she wasn’t leaving anything behind, and checked out of the inn.

Despite the brief but intense stay, and the uneasy feeling she had since she had met Kaku, she didn’t really want to go, but she had done the right thing booking passage for the ship to Sabaody. Imagine getting stuck in a city next to one of the government’s main islands because of a high tide. No, thanks, she hadn’t come this far to fail when she was a week away from her destination.

So it was with a bit of regret that Alex boarded the passenger ship that would carry her to the archipelago, but she had always been good at ignoring what she felt like doing in favor of what had to be done, and this was going to be no exception.

From the deck, she saw a pirate ship sail past them, black flag with a straw hat billowing in the wind.


	3. three degrees

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> One last detour before Sabaody.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter got so long that I had to split it in two. Next part is still in the works.

There was a storm.

Alex didn’t know if it was related to the Aqua Laguna that the ship had set out to avoid or it was simply one of the Grand Line’s meteorological whims, but two days after departure, the noon sky went so dark it was like a moonless night had come down early, the winds picked up, and the waves started to beat against the ship’s hull in an uneven rhythm.

The crew was all over the place, trying to steer the ship and reef the sails as they ushered the passengers inside to keep them from falling overboard. Alex had been caught in bad weather travelling before, but never to this extent. She had a hard time thinking of anything scarier than being at the mercy of a windy sea. Nowhere to run, nothing to do except wait and pray that the waters would take pity on you and let you live another day. Alex wasn’t the praying sort, so while she waited below deck with a group of people as scared as she was, if not more, she couldn’t even do that.

The nervous chatter of the passengers and the parents’ attempts to console their children were muffled by the deafening sounds of the wind, the waves, the creaking wood, and the crew’s rushed footsteps on the deck.

Alex stood the entire time in front of a porthole in the dining hall where they had gathered. It helped with the seasickness from the violent rocking of ship, it was better than to look at the other people, and, ironically, storms were her favorite kind of weather. She wondered what would be worse if they sunk, getting caught on deck and risking being swallowed by the ocean, or waiting for the insides of the ship to become a water tomb. For a long time, or at least it seemed like it, that was the main thought that repeated in her mind, until the possibility of dying felt so remote that she wasn’t even registering. Like when you picked a word and turned it around in your mouth and mind so many times that it lost all meaning. Of course she couldn’t die there. She had never done so before, so why start now?

It was absurd, but it helped. And it turned out to be right, too.

After a while, the storm subsided, and an hour later, the crew let them out on deck again. The ship wasn’t intact, but they hadn’t lost anybody, and that was as much as one could ask for when dealing with an angry sea.

In the end, there was only one major inconvenience: due to the damage, the ship had to change its course in order to dock somewhere safe to undergo repairs.

* * *

Her hair had gotten longer to the point of annoyance. The tips brushed her shoulders already; long enough to get in her face whenever it wanted, but too short to tie it in a decent ponytail. Sure, she could have done it anyway, but she was vain and would have rather dealt with the hassle than solve the problem in an aesthetically suboptimal way.

The sunspots on the left side of her face were getting more noticeable, as were the dark circles under her eyes and the shy wrinkles that were attempting to come out. For someone who could spend so much time picking her appearance apart in front of a mirror, she didn’t look particularly healthy or well put together. She supposed that was part of the appeal, in a masochistic way: to find as many faults as she could, and invent some if needed.

Applying concealer under her eyes and red lipstick just for the sake of having some color on her face, she thought she needed to find herself a headband and a healthier pastime posthaste. Porta Bella was a quaint town, but there wasn’t much in the way of entertainment, and she’d had only her thoughts for company for too long.

She had been stuck there for two weeks. After narrowly avoiding disaster, the ship had been moored in the harbor for several days, and by the time it was fit enough to sail, the captain decided to go back to Water 7 to have proper repairs done. The passengers had been given the choice to remain in Porta Bella and find another ship, or to return to Water 7 with the crew. Going back wasn’t an option for Alex when Sabaody was so close that it felt like she could have seen it if she climbed on a tall tree, she didn’t trust a half-baked repair job to keep her safe, and, most importantly, someone had tried to kill Iceburg and Enies Lobby had kind of blown up in the following days of her departure from Water 7.

She didn’t want to think that the tracksuit shipwright had something to do with it, but the conspiracy theorist in her told her that it was totally his fault. That nose? Could totally be used as a murder weapon and nobody would be none the wiser.

The few passengers aside from Alex who had decided to stay in Porta Bella were already gone, leaving the inn she was staying at delightfully empty, but also making her wonder if she had messed up by not taking the first random ship that would let her sail away from there.

The island was small, so much so that Porta Bella was the only town in it, and much of it was empty. For many years there had been a migratory tendency pushing young people from nearby islands to the Sabaody Archipelago, and this one seemed to have fallen victim to it, too. The moderately long recording time of the Log Pose didn’t play in its favor, either. Five days and a half was a long time to wait when the Red Line was only a couple of days away, so not many ships stopped there. An abandoned watchtower in the outskirts of town was the only other notable location.

She left her inn room that morning, picking up a tea to go, and hoping that a good slap of early morning breeze in the face would wake her up.

Every day since she arrived, she went to the port to look for any newly arrived ships and talk to the sailors. Every time, if there was a new one at all, she was told that there were reports of increased slaver activity in those waters, and that they were headed anywhere but the Sabaody Archipelago until Marine HQ got its shit together and stopped the kidnapping crews sailing rampant. Given that the Marines must have been scrambling to recover from the loss of Enies Lobby, nobody thought they were going to get on the case anytime soon.

These series of unfortunate coincidences didn’t surprise her. Her life was often comprised of really small strokes of bad luck that were nothing more than inconvenience on their own, but that added up to really grate on her nerves. This was business as usual, so she just had to keep trying. The temporary finish line was only a stone’s throw away.

Not that human trafficking stopped at any point of the year, but she hadn’t taken into account the seasonal opening of the archipelago’s biggest auction. Thinking that not even the schedule of the Human Auctioning House had changed during her time away gave her a twisted sense of familiarity. That son of a bitch kept finding novel ways to fuck her over without even being aware of her existence. It had to be a gift, for sure.

As she walked to the half empty docks, she hoped that that was the day she lucked out. She had already decided that, if she couldn’t find a direct ship to Sabaody in the following three days, she’d take the roundabout way and sail to a bigger island with, hopefully, a wider variety of ships. She would go completely broke in the process (and there she found the thing that was as terrifying as being caught in a storm at open sea), but one had to crack eggs to make an omelette.

Ten minutes and an empty cup of tea into her stroll, she stopped in front the single newly arrived ship and thought that maybe she hadn’t lucked out, but that sure as hell life was full of weird coincidences. Because there were few submarines sailing the Grand Line, even fewer painted yellow, and she guessed that only one with that particular Jolly Roger plastered on it. Her wish of seeing it up close had been granted when she least expected it, and it didn’t disappoint. It had a curious design, half ship and half submarine. _A shipmarine._

Feeling revitalized by the pun, she craned her neck and got on her tiptoes to accomplish nothing at all. She couldn’t see any of the pirates on the deck, at least from where she was standing, and what else was she supposed to do, walk closer to find a friendly face and say hi like a functioning human being would? Yeah, no. She simply stood there and stared like a creep.

The paint job of the thing was hypnotic, and she didn’t mean it as a compliment. It looked like the idea of a man who thought the peak of design was making his vehicle look like a wasp with a decal of the word ‘DEATH’ instead of stripes to look extra edgy. And okay, they were pirates, pirates killed people, it was something that came with the job – but plastering it over the ship like that was a little heavy handed, and she didn’t have any doubts as to which guy with matching tattoos had come up with those brilliant design choices. Come to think of it, wasn’t there a song about a yellow submarine? The one from those singers her mom liked when she was young… Maybe the captain was a fan, too. Maybe they sung it on board. She laughed at the thought.

It didn’t leave her indifferent, that was for sure, and that could count as a compliment, since she had seen a ton of ships throughout her life. Props to Trafalgar Law for standing out among the crowd.

If the pirates weren’t around at the moment, it had to mean they were inside of the ship or already out in town. It was early still, but she was sure it was a matter of time until she ran into them – the town was pretty small, around a hundred, counting sailors, on a good day, news travelled fast, and these guys didn’t dress unassumingly.

With that in mind, she kept an eye out for familiar faces and resumed her unfruitful rounds around the port. Another day, another set of rejections. She tossed her paper cup in a trash can and made her way to the coffee shop where she always had the second tea of the day, sometimes even the third, if she was feeling particularly down about her current predicament.

She placed her order at the counter and waited for it. The owner, a balding middle aged man whose name she didn’t know but who had started to get chatty after she showed up a few days in a row, tried to strike up a conversation while he heated the water. “Did you hear? A pirate crew arrived in town last night.”

Alex wasn’t much for conversation in the mornings, and usually her replies to his attempts were rather apathetic, but the owner had struck gold with this particular topic. “I just saw the ship,” she repeated. “Have they done anything?”

“Not yet,” he replied with the clear implication that they soon would. “But it’s a Supernova’s crew, from what I’ve heard. Their captain’s a scary guy – how do they call him…?”

She had mixed feelings about that. She’d seen scary first hand, and in her experience it came in the shape of kidnapping crews, bubble helmets, or suits and fedoras. And ultimately, it was the fedoras’ fault she was in that coffee shop in the first place.

“Surgeon of Death,” she replied. There was no doubt that with that price on his head he was a walking danger, but after their first encounter, she had a feeling he was more the selective type than the let’s wreck everything in our path kind of guy. Not that his list of attributed crimes would lead anybody to think that. “Do you have trouble with pirates often? Being close to Sabaody and all.”

“Sometimes, but they usually go to more interesting places. It used to be as easy as calling the garrison to get rid of ‘em, but with Marineford so close it’s no wonder no one wants to be here any longer.”

“There used to be Marines here?”

“Yes, at the watchtower in the outskirts, but they left after some of the rooftop caved in. Building’s condemned now. A pity, ‘cause the watchtower’s been there forever, and they’ve let it fall apart.”

“That’s a shame,” she said. “How old’s the tower?”

The water started boiling then, and he turned around to remove it from the fire and make her drink. “Tale goes that it’s old as the stone entrance, but who knows,” he said with his back turned to her. “It’s not like we have any experts to come check.” He slid her the drink over the counter. “In case, try to avoid those guys. A woman traveling alone is an easy target for criminals.”

“Yes, I know,” she replied, putting a few belis in the counter and taking the cup by the handle. “Thanks.”

She chose to sit on the terrace, next to the railing that separated it from the sidewalk, to have a good view of the street. She was in a sort of commercial district, if a main street with a dozen of shops could be called that. Most people who stopped at the island had to pass by sooner or later, so it was the busiest place in town. Not so early, though. It wasn’t opening hours yet.

Out of the corner of her eye, she watched like a hawk the man who was monopolizing the only issue of the World Economic Journal and snatched it as soon as he got up to leave, so fast that it turned the heads of the other two people on the terrace.

News of the assault of Enies Lobby had been filling pages for a week already, and that day wasn’t an exception. The Straw Hat Pirates had done the unthinkable, and while in other circumstances Alex might have been watching the situation with amusement from afar, she was also pretty annoyed at them, because their stunt no doubt played into the poor supervision in the waters near Sabaody. On the other hand, she hoped that this also meant that neither Marines nor Cipher Pol would be very invested in finding her in the near future if she ended up a suspect.

She was also a little worried about Iceburg’s condition, but the newspapers hadn’t reported his death, so she had to assume he had recovered from the attempt on his life.

She skimmed over the usual columns prattling about the lack of security at sea and how worrying it was that a whole new generation of rookies with astronomical bounties were about to set foot in the Sabaody Archipelago at the same time. She didn’t think having a handful extra menaces sailing around mattered anymore, considering the state of the world at large, but the pearl-clutching sold newspapers, and she wondered about her sense of self-preservation when she realized with disappointment that, at the rate she was moving, she was going to miss the Supernova meetup in Sabaody. Her curiosity was going to bite her in the ass one day, she thought, before remembering that it already had, and that was the exact reason she was in her current position.

She skim read a few pages looking for interesting headlines, getting to the less important news that didn’t warrant spreads, editorials and pictures that took up half the page, and paled when she read the contents of an unassuming text box.

An unfortunate accident in the island of Harlun had blown up the local library while it was undergoing renovations. Nobody had been hurt, said the write-up, but the building had been destroyed in the ensuing fire and an investigation was still ongoing to determine what had happened. At least she guessed that the last part of the article said so, because she choked on her tea as she read it and spit some of it on the paper, making the ink run.

It _couldn’t_ be a coincidence. Well, it technically could be, but no way she was buying that. The real question was if they’d be able to link the Poneglyph to her, and considering she that she was the person who spent the most time in the archive and she had conveniently left right before construction work took place, she had a pretty good chance to win that lottery. Oh, God, what if her coworkers mentioned that she used to go to the archive on Sundays, alone?

Her first impulse was to bang her head on the table and hide it between her arms, but the surface was sticky, so she ended up regretting it immediately. Instead, she put her elbows on the table, and covered her face with her hands. Her heart was beating loudly and her mind was running wild thinking of possible courses of action. She was on a timer. Getting to Sabaody as soon as possible was a necessity now. If there was a place she could hide, ironically, it was there.

“I see life’s treating you well.”

Alex’s heart tried to leap out of her mouth when she heard someone talk to her from so up close, but one of the perks of being born with a stick up her ass was that she only tensed up when she was startled, so she saved herself the embarrassment of yelping or jumping on her chair. She removed the hands from her face to look at the person, and the sight of a spotted furry hat and a yellow and black hoodie punched her in the eyes.

“Oh, hello,” she said, feeling more relaxed when she realized it was the Surgeon of Death leaning against the balustrade, not law enforcement. Her life had taken a turn for the surreal in a very short time, had it not?

His smirk faltered. “You aren’t surprised?”

“Saw your ship,” she said with some difficulty, and she drank some tea to swallowed the knot that had formed in her throat. Of all the times for him to appear… “Town’s small, we had to run into each other.”

“Hm.”

If she exerted a bit of imagination, she’d say he looked a bit disappointed. Why would he? No idea, but it was funny to think he was, and she was in dire need of funny.

He asked, “What are you doing here? This is far from your island.”

Farther than he knew, she almost said, but that was a can of worms and not relevant in the situation at hand. Feeling too overwhelmed to give long explanations, she handed him the newspaper open by the page she’d been reading. Talking could happen once she arranged her own thoughts, and only then.

“That’s…” He took it from her hands and read for a few seconds. An inscrutable expression gradually morphed into a look of pure indignation. “What’s the meaning of this?”

She was taken aback by the unexpected display of emotion. It was odd to see him react so strongly to something that didn’t concern him. “It isn’t that surprising, considering—”

“How is it not?” He retorted, annoyed. “Sora can’t lose against these weaklings!”

She stared at him in confusion. “What?” she blurted out, realizing afterwards that he was talking about the comic strip at the bottom of the page. And to be fair, she was going to tell him to look further up when the meaning of his words sunk in, but then she was the one leaning over the railing to look at the paper he was holding. “Wait, really? That’s impossible!”

“That’s what I’m saying!”

Upon reading the message under the strip, she complained, “On break until next month?” She sat back on the chair, mumbling, “I don’t even know if I’ll be alive next month,” before taking a sip of tea.

“Summer vacation cliffhanger,” he replied. “And you still haven’t told me what you’re doing here.”

“Read the news above.”

He looked at the paper again, and his eyes widened the smallest fraction as recognition dawned. That reaction was more appropriate. “Do you think it was…?”

“I’m sure of it. It’s too much of a coincidence.”

“Are you wanted now?”

“I don’t know. They have reason to suspect I knew it was there.” And she added with a bit of humor that she wasn’t really feeling, “If I get a bounty, I’ll say it was your fault.”

“I don’t think that’s going to do you any service.” A smirk returned to grace his features as he passed her the newspaper back. He was clearly amused by her misfortune, and that was the only good thing that had come out of it. “What do you plan to do?”

Alex let out a long exhale through her nose. She wanted to say that there was no plan, but there always was. Planning was something she did obsessively. “I need to get to Sabaody as soon as possible.” It was the only option. She could have elaborated, but again, she didn’t feel like it. Too early, too stunned to talk about serious stuff. Reality hadn’t fully sunk in. “You’re on Sora’s side? Really?”

He frowned at her. He did a lot of frowning, she thought. He was going to get wrinkles young. “Of course I am.”

“But he’s a Marine,” she said, a smile growing on her face despite herself. “Aren’t you one of the bad guys?”

“The Germa are _vile_ ,” he retorted, and perhaps realizing he was getting too much into the conversation, he went back to the other, much less fun topic. “Sabaody’s going to be full of Marines in no time, though.”

She was internally screaming, but it came out as a drawn out sigh. “Thanks to you, no doubt.”

“The merit isn’t all mine.”

“I know. You lot have been all over the news for weeks.” He looked awfully self-satisfied when she said that. “I guess you’ll be heading straight there after this place?”

“That’s the plan if there aren’t any stops in between. By the way, do you know how long until the Log Pose sets?”

“Five days, ten hours and twenty-six minutes,” she said blandly, repeating the number she had been told by several people when she first arrived to Porta Bella. It made her miserable, so of course she wasn’t going to forget it anytime soon.

“And the seconds?”

It took her way longer than necessary to realize he was messing with her. “Oh, fuck off.” She returned her attention to the newspaper so she didn’t have to look at his stupid face while he thought he was so funny. “Fishman Island’s right around the corner. Try not to drown.”

“We have a submarine.” He sounded amused still. Alex couldn’t tell if annoying her gave him that much joy or if he was having an exceptionally good day. He was pretty cranky for a while back in Duster Town, but now that she recalled, his mood seemed to improve every time he got one over her. “I don’t think it’ll be a problem.”

“Regular submarines can’t reach Fishman Island.”

He frowned _again_. “Why not?”

“It’s too deep. They can’t endure the water pressure.”

She could sense the levity from moments ago was gone by the way his jaw set. “But we heard ships can traverse the Red Line through an underwater route.”

“That’s why you go to Sabaody first.” She was exerting a considerable effort to give these really boring explanations that no one was going to thank her for. “You find yourself a good coating engineer to put a resin bubble around your ship and that’ll protect it.”

He seemed to study this new information from several angles before he spoke. “That’s good to know.”

“You’re welcome.”

He gave her a pointed look, but didn’t say anything about the jab. “Is it easy to find one?”

“There’s an entire section of the archipelago dedicated to it. It’s going to cost you, though. And depending on who you choose, there’ll be a waiting list.”

“Really?”

“Good coating engineers are few and far in between, and nobody wants to find out someone did a half-assed job on their ship five kilometers underwater.”

“That’s…” He made a meditative pause. “…Reasonable.”

“I thought you were going to say something completely different.”

“It sucks too.”

“Yeah,” she agreed. Her life would be so much easier if one didn’t have to jump through thirty hoops to cross that chunk of rock. “In a hurry to get to the New World?”

He didn’t answer. He didn’t need to, either, because she was busy contemplating a new idea that had sprung in her mind. One that she’d rather avoid if she had other options left, and she wouldn’t know until a few days passed, but… this coincidence could prove to be useful yet.

“What?” He looked at her with suspicion.

“Nothing.” And just to get on his nerves a little, she added. “Yet.”

He fixed his gaze on her face, most likely gauging her intentions. Alex was incapable of looking at people in the eye, but she was good at faking it and not flinching under pressure, so she stared back.

“Do I want to ask?”

“I don’t know. Follow your instincts.”

To her surprise, he dropped it and took a step back from the railing. “I need to go back to the sub and see if the others are up already.”

 _Good_. “For someone with a target so big on you, you wander a lot without them.”

“I like taking walks alone,” he said, like he didn’t think much of it. Like he could not fathom how _he_ of all people could possibly be in danger from anybody else. “See you around?”

Was that a wish, a threat, or a pleasantry? “Without a doubt,” she replied, not bothering to hide the tedium in her voice. Damn empty town and damn slavers. “This town isn’t big enough for the two of us.”

She could have sworn he smiled a little at that, but Law shoved his hands in his pockets and made his leave too fast to see.

He was far enough that he wouldn’t hear her if she spoke in a normal volume when she remembered something important, so she resorted to raising her voice before the Heart crew did something they could regret. “Go to the Old Brewery if you don’t want to die! The Silver Fountain serves piss for drinks!”

He turned to look at her with the same curiosity back when she’d told him weapons weren’t allowed in the library, but this time he nodded in acknowledgement before making his exit.

The other customers on the terrace stared at her warily, but honestly, she couldn’t bring herself to feel bad for them even when the owner immediately came out to ask if she was okay and if the scary surgeon had said anything bad to her. At least _something_ interesting was happening.

* * *

Alex had a love-hate relationship with heights.

She inevitably got queasy when she was somewhere high up that didn’t have barriers or anything she could hold onto, but that didn’t stop her from going up there, anyway. It was like a very stupid magnetic pull that one day would end with her skull split open.

(It was the wind and the view. She knew that. It was also one of the few options she had to feel taller than most people.

But mostly the wind.)

The stone arch at the entrance of the town that gave Porta Bella its name was surrounded by the remains of a stone wall. First century, she guessed by the roughness of the stone blocks and the bit of mortar she scraped from between when she inspected it for the first time. It was easily over two meters, and only because the topmost part had fallen off. The blocks that hadn’t been taken away for use in newer constructions were still next to the wall, inviting anyone who’d dare to step on them to use them to climb.

She knew she wasn’t the only idiot who had felt the temptation, because the stone was worn from use. She’d also seen kids running at the top of the wall and no one had tried to stop them, and there were worse ways to channel all the nervous energy she had from reading that newspaper article.

She wasn’t a very proficient climber, but the blocks were positioned in such a way that getting to the top was easy as pie. No doubts someone had moved them for that exact purpose. When she was high enough, she threw a leg over the wall, then the other one, and sat facing the harbor.

The wind was nice up there.

She wouldn’t stand on the wall for all the money in the world and getting down was going to be an ordeal, but that was a problem for the Alex of the future.

That day had woken up to four ships in the harbor, counting the pirates’ submarine. Two would go away at the end of the week. The third was leaving that night. No vessels on the horizon.

She sighed. If the pirates were on an adventure, they sure had the shittiest of lucks docking only in the most boring islands the sea could offer.

With nothing better to do at the moment, and trying to delay as much as possible the moment she’d regret climbing that high, she moved towards the shadow of the arch without lifting her butt from the stone and rested her back against it.

She was at a loss. Sailing further away from the Sabaody Archipelago was counterproductive, but so was staying in the same island for too long, since she had no means of protecting herself if something happened. Then again, if she ended up broke before she got to Sabaody, she’d have to stay in whatever island she was to earn money to keep travelling.

All the options sucked. Maybe she needed to sleep on it to see what the lesser evil was. She had, after all, a few days to make a decision.

She looked at the sea, tinted dark green by her sunglasses, in what she assumed was Sabaody’s direction. So close, yet so far away. The skies were clear and the water calm, and though there weren’t any sailors to be found in the harbor, she could see the shadow of a couple of fishing boats in the distance. Wasn’t there a song that went like that? _I’m sittin’ on the dock of the bay, wastin’ time…_

She hummed, looking at nowhere in particular and letting her thoughts drift with the waves.

* * *

_She knew better than to cut through the lawless areas alone when it was getting late, so she had no one else to fault when she split from her group of classmates after spending their free day in Sabaody Park. It was only her and her stupid pride that didn’t allow her to admit that she didn’t think this was a great idea and that she didn’t want to go back to her room alone._

_She broke into a sprint as soon as she heard the smallest rustle behind her, and that advantage proved to be essential, because someone started chasing after her. It sounded like more than one person, but she didn’t have time to look or tell how many sets of footsteps were behind her – she just ran like her life depended on it in the direction of the bridge that connected to the next grove, hoping that there would be other people there, and then—_

_—then she saw an open bar, a lone building in an even lonelier grove._

_She rushed inside it, gasping for air so hard that she couldn’t speak, no matter how much she tried to explain to the bartender why she had barged in like that._

_It wasn’t necessary._

_“Don’t worry, dear, they’ve been hanging around these parts for a while,” she said, leading her to a chair with a gentle hair. “You’re safe here.” Her warm black eyes turned to someone else, and though Alex had trouble focusing on what was going on, she saw an old man with long white hair. “Why don’t you go take out the trash, Ray? They’ve driven off my clientele enough.”_

_“Sure,” the man replied, getting up from his stool and going outside._

_Alex thought it was a horrible idea to send an old man to fight off a kidnapping crew, but that was because she didn’t know these people yet._

_“Don’t worry about him. Here,” the woman gave her a glass of water. “Name’s Shakky. Rest all you need.”_

* * *

Footsteps approached. She shut up immediately.

“I like that song.”

Singing helped when she had too much anxious energy. It was probably related to breathing control. She had stopped anxiety attacks in the making like that sometimes.

It didn’t help at all when someone had been listening in and she hadn’t noticed.

“Oh. Thanks. Um, hi.”

“Hi,” Bepo said smiling. “I heard from Captain you were here.”

Even though she was sitting on top of the wall, Bepo’s head went past it. If he stood on his tiptoes, he could have rested his head on her legs. On one hand, it was a little aggravating that she had to climb so high up only to be marginally taller than him. On the other, Alex was filled with the urge to scratch his ears.

“Yeah, I’m stuck waiting for a ship,” she told him. “Ideally, you wouldn’t have found me here.”

“Oh? Where are you going?”

“Sabaody.”

“Isn’t that very close? How come you haven’t found a ship?”

“There’s kidnapping crews infesting the waters. You know what those are?”

“Uh… isn’t it in the name?”

Alex blinked. “Right. Don’t mind me.”

He fell into thought for a few seconds. “Why are they kidnapping people?”

“To sell. They get auctioned in the archipelago.”

Bepo frowned. “I see.”

“Hey, don’t worry,” she said, smiling for his sake. “Nothing’s going to happen to your crew. You’re strong.”

He beamed with pride. “Yeah, we are! We’ve been training for years to come here!”

Alex mirrored his expression without thinking. “Your Captain said you’ve been friends since you were kids. Did you—”

“Bepo!” Someone called out. “What are you doing?”

“Ah, sorry!” Bepo said, turning around to see the newcomer. “I was catching up…”

A woman with curly hair and a severe expression walked up to them, hands on her hips, and she looked a little confused when she laid eyes on Alex. She was struggling to place her. “Have we seen each other…?”

“On passing. I’m the Duster Town dumbass that opened the library for your Captain.”

“Oh, yeah, now that you mention it—” The confusion was back. “Isn’t this place a little too far from there?”

“I’m running away from justice.” She didn’t offer further explanation.

Bepo didn’t need it. “So are we!”

A barely contained laugh made it past the woman’s lips. “Oh well, if you’re a fellow criminal…” She extended a hand towards Alex. “Name’s Ikkaku. What did you do, keep too many books past the return date?”

“I wish.” She shook her hand. “Alex.”

“So that’s your name?” Bepo asked.

She turned her attention towards the bear. “I never told you?”

“Nuh-uh.”

“Wow, I am rude,” she said to herself. “Anyway, hope you’re ready to take it easy, because you have five _long_ days ahead of you.”

Ikkaku groaned. “I don’t mind, but some of the guys get so jittery after a couple days on land. I don’t suppose there’s a very active nightlife in this place?”

“Actually, there are two taverns in the entire town.”

“Oh, that sounds like something to keep ‘em busy.”

“I don’t think you want to go to one of them, though.” She wondered if the captain was going to pass the message or they would come to regret their choices. “There’s also an abandoned Marine outpost right outside of town, if they don’t want to be drunk 24/7.”

“Might be worth checking out, but I’m pretty sure they’ll take the ale.”

“Can’t blame them.” _She_ was tempted to drown her sorrows in alcohol, and she barely ever drank.

She took a look around the desolate harbor, the small houses and the half-fallen wall with a disappointed look. “Well…” she began, “Bepo, we need you for the crates. He’s been waiting and he’s cranky enough already after—”

“Ah! Sorry!” He said, bowing at her and looking more upset than the comment would suggest. Maybe they didn’t treat him as well in the sub as she had assumed. When he turned to Alex, he also bowed repeatedly. “I’m really sorry, but I need to go!”

“Sure, no problem!” she said, making an effort to sound lively. She felt so fake when she did that. So customer servicey. “See you!”

As the pirates left, she tried to look at them in a different light. While it wasn’t too difficult to believe they would be mistreating the mink of the crew, even if they hadn’t been unkind while she was watching. He seemed shy. Maybe that was all there was to it? But the reaction seemed a little extreme. She would pay closer attention from then on.

* * *

Her privileged observation point let Alex see a lot of things that day. She saw more of the crew coming and going, though they didn’t seem to recognize her, she watched one of the docked ships depart, and she met a cat that tried to get food from her, but after a good back scratch realized she didn’t have anything else to offer and walked away, leaving a lonesome Alex staring at the hand she’d used to pet it, wondering how many parasites it had come in contact with.

She immediately went back to the inn to wash her hands and get dinner.

The rest of the evening was spent looking at her Poneglyph folder and her mostly blank notebook. She had carried with her the transcript of the stone and copied some documentation from the library that could prove useful in deciphering it, but she wasn’t making any headway yet. Very little was known about the ancient language, even less was published, and she wasn’t a cryptographer. So far, she had identified what she thought were punctuation signs separating sentences and one of the names in the text.

In her years working in Harlun, she had seen centuries old coins from a currency before belis, and some of them had the legend around the rim written in different languages. Meaning, she knew how to write the name of the island in that ancient language. That was about it. She had a feeling the script wasn’t pure phonetic, either, and that wasn’t something she could attempt to tackle without cross-referencing.

Porta Bella was a nice place to spend a short vacation, sure, but it was impossible to find any books that might help. She had tried. The local bookstore only carried best sellers, and she would have bought that vampire novel that was getting so popular if money wasn’t so tight and she had space in her bag, but as things were, she had to fight frustration and boredom alone.

She had to face the fact that she wasn’t going to do anything useful that night, either. She took off her reading glasses, thinking that trying to sleep sounded like the best idea. Maybe next morning she’d finally have some good luck and find a ship that wouldn’t carry her too far from the Red Line.

* * *

Too early for words, and wearing a flannel shirt as a jacket because it had gotten windy, she strode out of the inn with her paper cup and a new challenge. She had thought herself immune to monotony before this, but she had clearly overestimated her brain’s capability to get distracted by anything.

Instead of walking to the docks following the main road, like every morning, she made for the wall again. Stepping on the fallen rock, she reached up with her left hand to the top of the wall and placed the paper cup as far as she could from her, and then she climbed up like the previous day. Well, she tried to, because for some reason early in the morning she didn’t have a lot of hand strength, and she felt a stabbing pain in one of her knees when she stretched her leg to reach the wall.

It took two tries and the fear of having lost her first morning tea, but she got where she wanted.

Cross-legged, she sat on the wall and took sips of her drink while inspecting the docks. No new ships in sight. That time there was someone walking on one of the submarine’s decks, but she couldn’t make out their face, and she didn’t know most of the crew anyway.

The wind had driven all the clouds away, and the dark shadow on the horizon reminded her of how close she had been to getting to the New World before she had to reconsider the entire strategy.

She was about to sigh, but she sensed someone near her vicinity even before she heard the crunch of gravel, so she kept it to herself and looked over her shoulder.

That silly hat was becoming a familiar sight. Trafalgar Law looked up at her from a reasonable distance, having just noticed her. _Please don’t get any closer, please—_

He changed course and went towards Alex, who didn’t bother to hide how little she appreciated the company less than an hour after waking up.

“Morning walk?” she asked, or grunted, depending on who you asked.

“Yeah,” he replied, annoyingly awake. “What are you doing there?”

“Wasting time.”

Someone with a little more tact, or at least who cared about having it, would have taken a hint and left, but this was not the case. “I want to hear more about Sabaody.”

Oh, she wasn’t nearly awake enough for this, but she made an effort to not be outright rude. “Okay,” she relented. “But you ask me questions, I don’t want to think.”

That was good enough for him, it seemed. With irritating ease, and without having to step on the fallen stone, he boosted himself up against the wall and climbed it in a matter of seconds.

Something caught his attention when he looked up, and he stood up on the stone like the concepts of acrophobia and losing one’s balance were but a faraway ping in his radar. Alex’s mood was souring by the second, granted, a likely thing to happen at that hour. It wasn’t personal.

“Is that…?”

She turned to look in the same direction he was.

“Yeah. Red Line.”

“I didn’t think it was so close.”

“It’s a few days away still. It’s just that big.” She thought of the times she’d been at the base. It was impossible to see the top from its bottom. And, considering what lay up there, perhaps it was for the better. “You saw it from the other side, I guess?” North Blue was adjacent to the New World. In a sense, both of them were from the same side of the Line. How weird to think that they had anything in common.

“Yeah. We entered the Grand Line through Reverse Mountain.”

Expected, but incomprehensible to her unless he had a death wish. “Ships sink there every day. What do you want so bad that you’d risk that?”

“Wasn’t I the one asking the questions?” he shot back.

She gave him a deadpan look, then looked at the cup between her hands. It wasn’t doing much to drive away the numbness of her fingers. How many people had gone out to sea since the Great Age of Piracy began and failed because they bit more than they could chew? And they weren’t the only ones dying. For every decent man that got a ship and called himself a captain, there were ten whose only interest was pillaging villages and getting rich. Was that massive chain reaction what Gold Roger had intended with its final speech? Had it been a final fuck you to world order, or was there something else behind it?

She had contradicting thoughts about it. Roger’s last words had unarguably made the world worse, but…

Well.

The guy had been a badass. Even she wasn’t immune to seeing that. With every new pirate crew that sailed to Reverse Mountain to test its fortune, he kept proving how much bigger than life he had been. Twenty years down the line, he had become as much of a legend as the tales of gods from islands in the sky. The kind of legacy a regular person only dreams of having.

He said, _I will never die_.

He had been more right than he knew.

She looked at Trafalgar with renewed curiosity. “Are you trying to become Pirate King too?”

He didn’t give a clear answer, despite how easy of a question it was. “What if I am?”

It wasn’t a no. A straight yes would get many pirates laughed out of town even in a place like the Grand Line. There wasn’t a lot of room for romantic ideas of piracy when civilians lived in fear of black flags showing up one day at the port and taking away everything they had.

“Just curious.” She wasn’t feeling articulate enough to explain where she was going to herself, much less him. “Nothing wrong with dreaming big.”

As soon as the words left her mouth, she felt like she had called herself out. Where was _she_ going? After Sabaody, after crossing the Red Line, after getting to her hometown? Those were only checkpoints. But where was her purpose? Inside the bag she had in her room at the inn, or somewhere else?

An awkward silence stretched along with the horizon. For some reason, he decided not to press her for answers and sat down. A small mercy for Alex’s neck.

“After the Log Pose sets, it will point to Fishman Island. How do we get to Sabaody first?”

It was a relief to be able to give an answer she didn’t have to think about. “It should be visible when you’re close enough to the Red Line. It looks like a random cluster of trees popped up in the middle of the ocean.”

“That’s it? Is it safe to dock anywhere?”

“Mostly. The archipelago is made up of 80 groves. 60 to 69 house a Marine garrison, and that’s where the ferries to Marineford and Mary Geoise leave from, so you don’t want to be there. Other than that…” She had to strain to remember the range of numbers. “20 to 29 is the only lawless area open to sea, so you know Marines won’t go there, but since no one’s keeping watch, the competition might try to sabotage you. I don’t know, I never had to worry about that sort of thing.”

“I’m not afraid of other crews,” he said with that devil may care attitude that got pirates killed left and right. “We haven’t come this far without knowing how to defend our ship.”

She wasn’t going to argue his point. “I’m just saying what I know. You do you.” But she took note to keep her opinions to herself, lest he had the urge to express how full of himself he was again.

He looked at her like he was trying to figure out what sort of hidden meaning her noncommittal response held, but little did he know that behind the sleepy façade her prevailing thought was _it’s too early for this shit_.

“You said you spent some time in the archipelago.” It wasn’t worded like a question, but it was a way to probe for info. She supposed that she would have wanted to know the credentials of her sources, had she been in his position.

She hummed. “I lived there a few years.”

Taking a sip from the cup, she returned her attention towards the outline in the horizon. It had been a constant part of the scenery back then, always peeking out from behind the trees and buildings of the groves closest to the shore. A grim reminder, on one hand, of those who lived above the peasants, but at the same time, Sabaody had been… fun. There was always something happening. Moderately dangerous, but always entertaining. She had forgotten how that felt after the years of routine in Duster Town.

A question brought her out of her thoughts. “Are you from this area?”

“Oh, no,” she said, surprised that he had even entertained the idea. “No, I got a scholarship to study in one of the World Government’s academies. I’m from the other side of the Red Line.”

“From the New World?” He said with surprise, and mulled over this new piece of information until it fit satisfactorily in whatever picture of her he had constructed in his mind. “So that’s where the accent’s from.”

It was unexpected comment after unexpected comment. “Excuse me?” she replied in an incredulous tone. “ _You_ are the one with a heavy accent.”

Now it was him who got caught off guard. “That’s not true,” he retorted. He looked like he was trying to determine if she was pulling his leg.

“Yes it is,” she insisted. “ _Everybody_ has an accent. You and your crew have that typical northern one that sounds like you’re about to shank the person you’re saying hello to.”

For a moment, she thought he had offended him to the point of silence. Just for a moment, because he didn’t take long to counter with, “ _You_ sound like you’re trying to whisper through a megaphone.”

She snorted with laughter as soon as the words sunk in. It was true that she spoke in a low voice most of the time. “If that isn’t the best description of Dressrosan I’ve heard—”

She felt an immediate change in atmosphere, like an electric current shooting through the air, and shut up as a precaution.

Trafalgar has tensed up all of a sudden and was staring at her like she had grown a second head, like she was trying to set her on fire with a glare, or both. “What did you say?”

She found herself tensing up in return, even though she didn’t know what she had done. But when a dangerous guy scowled at you like that, survival instincts kicked in. Goodbye sleepiness, and welcome life danger. “Um… Dressrosan?” She eyed him warily. “My mother tongue?”

His eyes grew wider, but other than that, his expression didn’t change much. “You’re from Dressrosa?”

She suddenly understood. It wasn’t the first time she got odd reactions when she said where she was from, but it had been a while. “Oh, right.” She sighed. “You’ve heard of the whole Doflamingo thing.”

Or… maybe she was wrong. He seemed a little out of it, like he was looking past her at… who knew what was in his head.

After a few seconds without a reply, she deemed it safe to speak. “Did I say anything wrong?”

“…No. I was just surprised.” After that, he seemed to go back to normal, though his voice sounded a little strained. He was still tense. “It’s a long way there.”

Suspicious. Did he know someone from there? “It’s not so much the distance as having the Red Line in the way. Getting permission to cross it takes time.” And she figured that she had run out of it.

“How’s the country?” He asked in a way that tried to sound casual, and maybe, _maybe_ would have worked if he hadn’t made clear already that he had a particular interest in it. “Being ruled by pirates and all.”

She made a disgruntled sound. She had signed up to answer questions about the Sabaody Archipelago, not Dressrosa. There was a reason why she hadn’t been home in ages. “It’s doing fine. Better than fine, in fact. Economy is booming. People are happy.” She delivered each sentence in a quick, clipped tone. “It pisses me off.”

“Why?”

Because she always had to be the odd one out, she thought. And this guy wasn’t getting the message that she didn’t want to talk about it. “Doflamingo doesn’t deserve that kind of credit. He and his crew should go back to the hole they crawled out of.”

He huffed. “North Blue’s had enough of him already.”

Animosity was dripping from his words, and that made her feel a little less displeased and a lot more interested in what he had to say. He could’ve seen firsthand the repercussions of Doflamingo’s actions there.

“That’s true.” She didn’t know much about the specifics, but there was a reason the North Blue was considered the most dangerous out of the four cardinal seas. “I guess he did a number there before he moved onto the Grand Line.”

“You don’t sound very fond of him either.”

Look at that, a flat out admission of having feelings about someone.

“He’s scum,” she said with more venom than she had meant to. “He dethroned the king only to take over himself, reinstated gladiator fights to death, and he has a trafficking empire. The Human Auctioning House in Sabaody displays his Jolly Roger openly. But he’s a Warlord. As long as money keeps flowing and the Celestial Dragons can buy new pets, nobody seems to care.”

“And you do? You say your country’s doing well.”

She didn’t know whether to reply honestly or not. He was trying to dig deeper than she was comfortable with answering, but she was on a roll already. “Dressrosa used to be a very poor country. I’m not blaming the people who have a better life now, but I don’t think you can build anything stable from corruption. Someone _will_ topple Doflamingo one day, and the country will go down with him.” Her tone was increasingly becoming more determined. “And when the time comes, I hope they get rid of kings once and for all.”

“You lost me at that last part.”

“Monarchy is an obsolete form of government. How’s the world going to get rid of the Celestial Dragons if we can’t even get rid of the pests at home?”

He stared at her blankly, and that was when she realized she had talked too much and looked away from him. Ah, to be a life form capable of fusing with granite and dying in the spot…

She heard a short, muffled laugh, and glanced at him. Great, a pirate making fun of her was exactly what she needed to start her day.

“Can’t say I took you for an anarchist.” He was smirking.

“What part of ‘fuck the government’ was unclear?” she replied, still avoiding to look at him. “The more time you spend near Mary Geoise, the more you realize everything has to burn down. Then there are the Marines.” A lost cause. “It’s even their combined fault that I’m stuck here.”

“What do you mean?” He sounded relaxed again. It was like he hadn’t been acting like a weirdo through the entire conversation about Dressrosa. “Aren’t you just waiting for a ship?”

She took a long breath in preparation to give the same explanation she’d been getting every time she spoke to a newly arrived sailor. “Kidnapping crews are infesting the waters ahead. Normal ships don’t want to go near Sabaody because there’s going to be a human auction next week. Marines aren’t helping because the government benefits from the slave trade, and I assume the Enies Lobby debacle has hit them hard. I already told Bepo you don’t have to worry about it, though. They only attack pirates if they think they’re weaklings.” And trying to change the subject to something that didn’t force her to wallow in her misery, she asked, “How much was it already, Mr. Supernova?”

He looked awfully satisfied with his title. “It’s not Trafalgar anymore?”

“I’ve always liked stars.” And speaking of Bepo, she remembered something from their conversation the day before. “By the way, I don’t think I introduced myself. I’m—”

“Bepo told me. I like Librarian-ya better.”

She had an urge to fling what was left of her tea at him, but she held back at the expense of looking away and letting a strained smile show. Not worth the loss of beverage. It wasn’t going to stop him from being an early morning smartass.

The silence that ensued this time didn’t feel as uncomfortable as before, but that bar was so low, it might as well have been underground.


	4. love-hate

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Porta Bella's collection of heights.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was suposed to be a break after Inked on Skin, I told myself. Something fun and light to write while I moved onto my other OCs. I'm a clown. How did I get this ready in less than a week? No idea, and I'd say it's unlikely to happen again, but that's the fastest way to guarantee there's another chapter next week.
> 
> Now seriously, I need to reread some of the Sabaody arc before I write chapter 5 onwards, so it might take a while.
> 
> Also, I've noticed I can't put any info in a pseud's profile, so in case I've somehow picked up any new readers with this, you can find me at [tackyink.tumblr.com](tackyink.tumblr.com)
> 
> And thanks a lot everyone for the kudos, comments and bookmarks! <3 They make writing much less of a struggle.

If there was someone up there, he was surely laughing at Law. He remembered the kindly god the nuns always spoke of, the never ending church services he’d attended as a child, and he thought that they had it all backwards.

Dressrosa was a name that had haunted him for nearly a decade. The kingdom Cora wanted to save, the faraway objective in his mind even since he’d decided to become a pirate. The last thing he had imagined was that he would run into one of its inhabitants so early on, and in such an unremarkable way. For all intents and purposes, Alex was a regular civilian, not someone you’d expect to come from a country ruled by criminals. She was normal. Maybe a bit touched in the head for humoring him, but so many people in the Grand Line had normalized the presence of pirates in their daily lives that that attitude was starting to become the norm, rather than the exception.

He didn’t know what he had been expecting. A war-torn country full of miserable people subjected to the whims of a tyrant, a place where no one could possibly be happy, because how could they, when Doflamingo was sitting on its throne?

The notion that they were happy under his rule made Law’s stomach turn. Cora had lost his life trying to prevent this outcome. Was there any point in saving a country that didn’t want to be saved? Did he—

“Captain, are you coming?”

Law stopped in his tracks on the way to the sickbay. He didn’t have any business in particular there, but it was a good place to be when he wanted to be alone, and he wasn’t in a mood for people. Most of the crew was walking out of the sub, which was convenient, but he hadn’t thought they were headed somewhere specific.

“Hm? Where are you going?”

“There’s an abandoned tower in the outskirts,” Uni said. “We’re going to explore.”

Fascinating. At least he’d know where it happened where someone came back hurt. “I’ll pass,” he replied. “Have fun.”

No one insisted because they knew better than trying to convince the captain to do something when he wasn’t interested, but Penguin and Shachi lingered at the back of the group, letting the rest go ahead. It had to be them.

“You okay?” Shachi asked.

“Of course I am.” He tried to sound casual. Even to force out a small smile. For two blessed seconds he fooled himself into thinking it worked.

“Okay, now _that’s_ suspicious,” Penguin said, and Law’s sad attempt at a smile died. “Did something happen out there?”

“Someone?” Shachi added, and Law stared at him, waiting for an explanation. “You can see that wall from the deck, you know.”

Sometimes, having friends who knew you well was a pain. “I ran into the librarian. Asked her a few questions about Sabaody.” That was as far as admissions would go.

“And?”

“And what?”

“You look like you just came from a funeral.”

“Maybe you need new glasses. Should I check your eyes?”

Shachi wasn’t impressed. “Oh, so you’re going to be like that.”

“Did you get rejected?” Penguin asked all of a sudden.

“What the—What makes you think that—” It took one glance at Penguin’s shit eating grin to realize he was actively trying to get on his nerves. “Go away, you’re going to get left behind.”

Shachi pointed a menacing finger at him. “This conversation isn’t over!”

He supposed not.

* * *

The red fabric headband she was trying on looked good. She was going to buy it in a few different colors, just in case. And hairpins. And hair ties. And a light blue nail polish that was calling out to her.

Alex came out of the shop holding a small paper bag that contained all her cheap impulse purchases and not feeling any better than when she had entered it.

She had overshared. She had definitely overshared and that made her nervous as hell. It wasn’t like she had told him personal things, but she had spoken too damn much. That was what being alone most of the time did to her, it seemed. She couldn’t wait to be back in Sabaody and see a friend instead of that facsimile of an acquaintance that she had with the Heart Pirates.

Maybe she should have tried to talk some more to Bepo. Ikkaku looked a little intimidating, but her previous interaction had been okay. And those other two… one was called Penguin for sure, the other she couldn’t remember. More people should wear their name on their hats; it would make her life so much easier.

She checked the contents of her coin purse when she stepped outside to count what she had left and found a coin she hadn’t noticed before. Oh, it was issued in Water 7 with a design of the fountain. Pretty. She’d try to keep that one.

Where was she? Oh, yes, oversharing. For a brief moment she had managed to stop cringing at herself.

It would do her good to try and talk to some members of the crew, and not just because her lack of human interaction was starting to become concerning. She wanted to find out if it would be safe for her to ask them to give her a ride to the Sabaody Archipelago. She even had something to offer in return, though it was up to them if they’d take her up on it. It seemed like it would be the best case scenario for her, as things stood: she would get to reunite with her friends faster, with a crew that was probably not going to get assaulted by slavers on the way, and for _free_ , if she didn’t count the hassle of trading favors.

(She did not. Money was so much more valuable at the moment.)

A loud laugh caught her attention and she turned to look at the source. A group of about ten Heart Pirates was walking towards the back entrance of the town. Well, she could call it an entrance if she was feeling generous, but from what she had seen, it was just a place where the wall that surrounded the town had fallen down and people had started to use the gap as a road to the fields outside. The houses near it had been abandoned too, probably because nobody wanted to risk a loose stone falling on them while they were watering the plants of their balcony.

In short, there wasn’t anything there, but she guessed they didn’t know yet, since they’d been in town for only a day. Soon disappointment would sink their claws into them.

* * *

She was so bored that she even stopped procrastinating on her letters that afternoon.

_“Dear Mom and Dad,_

_How are you? Things are going well on my end. I’ve made a short stop to sightsee, but I’ll reach Sabaody in a few days. I’m having a lot of fun after not leaving Harlun for so long._

_I’ll send you my address as soon as I’m settled in Sabaody. I’ll ask my friends to help me find a job while the permit to cross gets approved. Hopefully, I’ll be back home by the end of summer. I miss Dressrosa._

_See you soon,_

_Alex”_

She wondered when lying had become so easy.

* * *

The next morning saw her making her rounds through the depressingly empty docks, and later on the coffee shop’s terrace glued to the day’s newspaper.

There hadn’t been any news about Duster Town after the initial one. Her face hadn’t joined the variety of new bounties, either. Small mercies.

She was starting to doubt herself, truth be told. Maybe she had massively overreacted and there was no reason to book it, from the beginning. Then again, she had been avoiding making the trip back to Dressrosa for years, so Poneglyph or not, it was a long time coming.

The problem was the Red Line. The problem was _always_ the Red Line. What would a world without it look like? Sailing from sea to sea would be so much easier…

It wasn’t like there was anything preventing her from requesting permission to cross other than her suspicions that the library fire hadn’t been accidental. Even if that was the case, they didn’t necessarily have to link the discovery to her sudden departure. But if they did…

Did that mean she’d have to go through Fishman Island? That she had to trust a complete stranger to not wreck their ship while she was on board? What was the percentage of accidents making that descent, again? She hadn’t looked at it in years and she didn’t remember it, but she did recall thinking that nothing was worth taking the risk.

Her best bet, she decided, at least until she changed her mind again in the next hours, was waiting in Sabaody for a couple of months, see if nothing happened, and when she was relatively sure the men in black wouldn’t come to randomly abduct her, apply for the permit.

That was assuming nothing else went wrong. Disgustingly optimistic of her, for sure. She wasn’t contemplating the other option because there was no real plan B in case she became wanted. She had run out of ideas after hiding. She had to work on that.

A gust of wind blew and the paper tried to escape from her hands. With a soft yelp, she got up to catch it before it could fly away, but she knocked her chair back. She winced at the sound of metal on stone.

“Oh hey, it’s you.”

Confused by a voice she couldn’t place, she turned to look at the newcomer, clutching the newspaper close without meaning to. “Oh.” It was the redhead she had met at the bar in Duster Town. His friend Penguin was next to him, too, and Bepo was trailing behind them, yawning. Same, man, same. “Hi, um…” Her mind went through twenty permutations of how to ask for his name again without embarrassing herself and found none.

Maybe he saw the panic in her eyes, because she said, “Shachi.”

“So sorry, I have an awful memory for names.” She smiled guiltily. “Alex.”

“Bet you haven’t forgotten mine,” Penguin said.

“You’re playing with advantage,” his friend replied.

“Maybe you should get your name embroidered on your hat too,” Penguin suggested. “Even better, get an orca hat.”

“I will the day you get a penguin on yours.”

She watched the ongoing squabble in silence, fiddling with the newspaper and feeling the ink seep into her hands. She could have left it on the table, but there was a good chance it’d be blown away again. As things were, the only thing she wanted to do was extricate herself from this social situation and wash her hands, but she had to remember she had potential business with these people.

The two seemed to remember they weren’t alone when Bepo caught up with them.

“Morning,” Alex said.

Bepo looked at her through bleary eyes and muttered something unintelligible. She felt that.

“You’re slow,” Shachi complained.

“Sorry…” he mumbled.

Alex observed the exchange with worry. “Are you okay?”

“Mmhm.”

“He has a night schedule,” Penguin explained.

“Then why are you taking him out?”

“He wanted to come!” Shachi said. “We’re going to the watchtower.”

Alex craned her neck to take a quick glance at the clock hanging from the wall inside the coffee shop and make sure she hadn’t lost track of time. She hadn’t. “At this hour?”

“Low tide. The basement floods, so we have to check it out now.”

“Oh. Makes sense,” she replied, and curiosity reared up its ugly head. “Is there anything interesting down there?”

“That’s what we’re going to find out,” Penguin said. “Wanna come?”

She was about to say ‘no, thanks’ without thinking, but stopped herself right on time. Why not? Did she have anything else to do? Hadn’t she been thinking about trying to be on friendly terms with these people? She could also test the waters; see if they were safe to have around.

“Yeah, sure. Just give me a moment.”

She downed the rest of her tea in one gulp, secured the newspaper with the empty cup so it didn’t fly away, and made a beeline for the café’s bathrooms to get the nasty inky feeling out of her hands.

On the way out, the owner looked concerned enough that he didn’t ask if she was okay.

* * *

It was a short walk from town, though long enough to learn from the guys that they had already gone to the watchtower the day before with a full group, but when they invited the rest of the crew to tag along that morning, they’d told them to get out and let them sleep. Someone had hit Shachi in the face with a weighted pillow. Alex couldn’t blame them. With so little to do, staying unconscious as long as possible until it was time to depart was sound thinking.

Shachi and Penguin were equipped with small backpacks to carry the amazing artifacts they were about to find and rub them in their companions’ noses.

It was unlikely that the Marines had left anything of use behind, but passing up the opportunity of checking out an abandoned historical building went against her primal urges. She was content with having something to do.

It was also a good thing that those two could carry a conversation on their own without requiring her active participation. Most of her interactions with strangers died awkwardly after a couple of dry sentences unless the other person was really trying to make it work. She didn’t do it on purpose; it was just that something in her socialization process as a child had failed catastrophically.

“Be careful where you step,” Shachi warned her when they were in front of the tower. “There are some rickety parts.”

Alex looked up.

Rickety was such a big euphemism that it bordered on lie. The coffee shop owner hadn’t exaggerated when he said the tower was condemned – the entire top part had fallen down, pieces of bricks and brittle stone scattered around its base, and it looked like a strong wind could knock what was left of it down. Looking at the external wall, there were several tiers of material. The base was made with small weather-worn stones that looked sturdier than the reddish stone and fired clay bricks used for the upper part. No amount of solid foundation would help if the ceiling collapsed on them, though.

It was clear that the building had been remodeled many times along the years, and also that the Marines had been spot on in their judgement to get out of dodge before someone regretted it.

“Rickety,” Alex repeated, tone flat, before taking a step forward and peering inside the circular room. The ceiling was made of wood, and one of the beams had already fallen down along with the floorboards. The spiral staircase, however, was made of stone and looked unconcerned by the passage of time if one ignored the rusted metal railing. One cut with that could send you straight to the hospital, death certain, because if the raging infection didn’t kill you, the bill would. How nice it must have been to have a doctor captain to be able to freely make bad decisions.

Come to think of it, she wasn’t sure their captain was a doctor. He had visited the library for a medical book, but it could’ve been a sentimental thing, if it was written by relatives, and the Marines sometimes chose odd epithets for pirates. And the guy did go around dismembering people, if she had to believe what they said, which didn’t sound like something a proper doctor would be keen on doing.

(She wasn’t sure what to believe, but at this point she was fairly sure that, if he did, it wasn’t without provocation, and that was as much as she could ask for in the world where she lived.)

She went into the tower, deeming the floor secure enough, and the others followed suit. She wasn’t so confident about structural stability with a polar bear stepping on it, though.

“Is your captain really a doctor?” she asked, eyeing every potential source of danger. Closer observation revealed that what crunched each time she took a step wasn’t gravel, but tiny glass shards from windows that were no more. Great, now inhaling dust wasn’t just a danger because of her allergy. Maybe she could pull the headband around her mouth…

“The best there is!” Penguin replied with a grin. “Do you want to see the scar from when he reattached my arm?”

“Oh, that’s not necessary, thanks.” That was enough confirmation for her. “I believe you.”

She wondered if she had been too curt when Penguin’s jolly expression froze. She gave him an uncomfortable smile and walked a few steps away, desperately trying to find something interesting to look at.

She wouldn’t have heard Shachi’s whisper if she hadn’t been paying very close attention to the mood in the room. “I’ve told you, girls don’t like scars.”

“You never know if you don’t try.”

She let out a soft sigh. It wasn’t too late to turn back, but it would probably be rude. She didn’t want to get on these people’s wrong side when they were the best option she had to get out of Porta Bella before the auction opened.

Bepo, ignoring his friends, walked to the staircase, descended a couple of steps, and threw her a lifeline. “Are you coming?”

“Yeah!” She went immediately after him, glad to have an escape.

There was very little light in the lower floor, only what the hole of the staircase allowed, but it wasn’t long before the other two joined them and lit a lamp that Shachi had been carrying in his backpack.

He grinned. The combination of it and the flame’s reflection dancing on his sunglasses was a little unsettling. Why didn’t he take them off? “We’ve come prepared today.”

The spiral staircase stopped there, but further ahead, there was an open hatch with a ladder. It was rusty, as well, and Alex lamented not having brought a pair of gloves. Now she was forced to touch things.

“I’ll go ahead,” Shachi said, hanging the lamp from his wrist and disappearing down the hatch. The sudden change in light left Alex blind, and judging by the complaints around the room, she wasn’t the only one.

Like a moth to the flame, she followed the light, but only after letting the other two go in front of her. She didn’t like having people behind her back, and if something was going to give under Bepo’s weight, she’d rather be up than caught further down.

“Ah.”

When she reached the bottom, she found herself standing in a vault. The stone used had changed again, looking the same as the one the town’s stone arch. It was cold and very humid in there, and the floor was slippery with some kind of algae growing between the cracks. There was a potent odor of saltwater in the air that scratched at the back of her throat and reminded her of all the times a big wave had made her tumble and swallow seawater.

“Something the matter?” Penguin asked.

“No.” Noticing she had sounded too harsh again, she added, “Just looking at the masonry. It’s ancient.”

A structure that old and seemingly solid could have been kept upright with only a little maintenance through the ages. A pity that no one had cared to.

She thought they had stopped paying attention to her until Penguin asked, “So why are you here, exactly?”

She turned towards him, confused by the non-sequitur. “Uh, you asked me to—”

“No, I mean in this town.” He sounded curious. “Aren’t you a librarian?”

“Not anymore, and technically I was a historian working in a…” She trailed off, realizing something odd. “Huh, your captain didn’t tell you?”

It was Shachi who replied. “He said you found something you shouldn’t and you moved from your town.”

“Well, that’s a good summary.”

“And what’s the whole story?”

A fair question to ask, but she wished their captain had been a little more talkative. It made her wonder if he was this reserved with everybody and if there was any reason for it or it was just how he was. Until then, she had assumed he didn’t let on much because he didn’t trust her. “You know what a Poneglyph is?”

Three pirates looked at her in confusion, and she took it as an opportunity to do an infodump. “There are these huge blocks of stone with ancient inscriptions randomly scattered through the world. They were made in the Void Century and World Government prohibits their study, because God knows what they’re trying to hide. I stumbled upon a secret room in the library of Duster Town, and there was one hidden there. It was going to be found soon, since the basement was undergoing renovations in a few weeks. I booked it out of there before it was reported.” She finished worrying that she had talked too much. She probably could have summarized it better. Ugh, she and her tendency to ramble when—

“But why did you leave if you only found it?” Shachi asked.

Oh, so they hadn’t disconnected mid-rant. Good. “Because I was the member of staff that spent the most time in the basement and the only historian working there. Even if I hadn’t done anything, I would’ve been a suspect.”

“Huh… Wait…” Bepo said. “Even if you hadn’t?”

“…I kinda copied its contents and took them with me.”

Penguin cackled.

“That’s why you said you’re running from justice!” Bepo was smiling. It didn’t make her current unstable status as a civilian worth it, but it was something.

“Yeah. I got confirmation two days ago that the secret room was found. The library mysteriously burned down.” All those books and registries. It pained her just to think about it.

She was surprise by their reaction, though. They looked downright horrified, and she didn’t know why.

Shachi spoke after a moment of dense silence in which she just looked at them, and them at her. “…Dude. You’re telling us you could be dead if you hadn’t left?”

 _Oh._ She felt the weight of her circumstances drop on her that instant. She didn’t _need_ him to put it like that, but at the same time... “You know, it’s validating to hear from someone else that the situation’s that serious.” She had been doubting herself a lot lately.

“What are you gonna do?”

“I’m trying to get back home, since the World Government’s usually happy to leave my country alone.” The perks of having an approved madman at the wheel. “But I don’t know how I’ll cross the Red Line anymore. Might have to stay a long time in Sabaody.”

“You aren’t from Duster Town?” Penguin asked.

“No, I’m from—” She cut herself short. Trafalgar had had a weird reaction when she said it. Should she keep quiet, or try to prod his friends for info and figure out why?

Her bout of indecision lasted more than she had thought, because she was prompted by Bepo. “From?”

She decided to be honest. “I don’t know if I should tell you, because your captain had a very weird reaction when I told him.”

Penguin and Shachi looked at each other as soon as she said that, and then Penguin sounded extremely interested when he asked, “He did? Why?”

“I was hoping you’d know.”

“Well, where are you from?”

“Dressrosa.”

He faltered. “What?”

Shachi muttered a curse as the lamp almost slipped his hand, and Bepo didn’t say anything, but he gaped, closed his mouth, and proceeded to look very uncomfortable.

Alex’s hands moved to her hips, and she said with exasperation, “What’s the deal with you people?”

“It’s not—It’s just that—” Shachi was stumbling over his own words. “There’s a lot of history behind it, okay?”

“Could’ve figured that out myself,” she replied. “Did you have a bad encounter with the Donquixote Family?”

“Oh, look, the way ahead isn’t flooded yet!” Bepo interrupted quickly. “It smells different! Why don’t we check it out while we can?”

“Yeah, good thinking, Bepo!”

“Let’s go!”

“Okay, I get it!” She shouted as they basically ran away from her. “No asking!”

“Please and thank you!” Penguin said without looking back.

It only made her want to know more.

As expected, the former occupants of the building hadn’t left much behind. There were pieces of broken furniture and some weapons covered in rust. Crates and barrels had bloated with humidity, and they were now empty and easily breakable. They figured that last one out because Penguin tried to stand up on one when Alex noticed something lodged between the ceiling and one of the decorations of the arches that held it up. Since Penguin was going to have splinters up his ass and no one wanted to risk being next, Shachi put the lantern on the floor and climbed on Bepo’s shoulders to reach the object. It was so stuck that, when he pulled it out, he lost his balance and fell backwards, dropping it. Penguin and Alex ran to try to catch them, but Penguin missed the object before it touched the floor, and Alex didn’t have enough strength to stop a grown-ass man midair. She winced at the sound of glass breaking, Bepo yelled, and the other two cursed.

She observed the proceedings in wonder. She didn’t know how good they were at their current job, but if they ever wanted to quit she was sure could find work as stand-up comedians. She felt tempted to tell them this, but held back just in case.

The lock of the chest fell to pieces with a blow from a hammer with a broken handle, but the lid didn’t have plans of giving in so easily. They looked around for something to use as a pry bar, and they had to resort to pulling out the lowest bar of the ladder. With that, the guys managed to crack the chest open, but Alex couldn’t help but worry about their complete disregard to damaging their means of exiting the vault.

Its contents were in the shape one would have expected after taking that hit. The inside of the chest was miraculously dry, but it didn’t matter when all there was inside was a smashed compass, what looked like spare clock pieces, and a rectangular box. No wonder nobody had made the effort to retrieve it from the ceiling.

“I was thinking…” Alex said, “Did the water fill the entire room the last time you came? I assume the chest floated that high up.”

Before the wood bloated and it got stuck, it probably had been just sitting in that nook.

“Yeah, you couldn’t go down the ladder before,” Bepo replied. “What is that?”

Penguin took out the box. “Let’s see.”

It opened with a _plop_.

The object inside wasn’t broken. It was a small orb with a suspended needle in the middle, held together by a wooden frame reminiscent of an hourglass.

Bepo’s eyes lit up. “An Eternal Pose! And it works!”

“Where’s it point to?” Shachi asked, huddling closer to Penguin.

Penguin strained to read the inscription. “I… have no clue.”

“Let me see… oh.”

“Told ya.”

“It’s like Captain’s writing, but pointier,” Bepo said.

“A mess is what it is.”

She thought about asking about what that meant, but she wanted to see the writing with her own eyes, so she got closer to them. “Can I see?”

“Yeah. Good luck,” Shachi said sarcastically, taking a small step back to let her pass.

She had expected an atrocity committed by someone who wasn’t all that used to writing, but what she saw wasn’t bad writing, it was just… old.

“That looks like Oceanic script,” she said, and extended a hand towards Penguin. “May I?”

“Uh, sure.”

She felt very observed as she examined the letters. It was true that the person who had engraved the name didn’t seem to know well what they were doing, but it was legible.

“It says Brisseni… a? ‘E’? I’d say ‘a,’ but I’m not sure. Someone slipped on that last one.”

“And where’s that?

She shrugged, returning the Eternal Pose to Penguin.

He took it and examined the inscription once again. “So it’s not chicken scratch?”

“It’s a common script, about four hundred years old. People wrote like this back then. See how that’s a ‘b’?” She pointed at the first letter.

“Looks like a man doubled over to me.”

“…Fair.”

“At least we got something out of this,” Shachi said. “No one can laugh at us for getting up early now.”

They returned the Eternal Pose to the box and Penguin put it in his backpack, then walked deeper into the vault of hopes of finding something else.

The Marines had cleaned out the place thoroughly, though, and the only thing they found was where the water was coming from. A wall at the far end of the room had crumbled down, and it revealed a natural corridor of rock that went up. A thin stream of water traversed it, and Alex noticed then that the floor seemed wetter than it was when they’d first arrived.

The passage was wide enough for several people to walk side by side, and while the smooth, slippery ground didn’t make the ascent easy, after a couple of minutes they took a turn and reached an exit, and they found themselves standing on a rock cove with an old dock. They were at the foot of a cliff of jagged, crumbly rocks, and the watchtower was directly above it. Not the safest place to be.

Penguin readjusted his cap to keep the sun from hitting him in the eyes. “This reminds me of Swallow Island.”

“Right? I was almost waiting to find a submarine at the end of it.”

“I hope he’s doing well,” Bepo said.

Past the protruding rocks started the same beach that surrounded the town, minus the harbor. Had she been wearing a swimsuit, she could have just jumped into the water and swam to the beach instead of making her way back through the dilapidated structure.

The guys spent a few minutes talking while Alex tried to climb the rocks that looked more secure to see if there was a relatively easy path from there, but after she grabbed a rock and crushed it with a pathetic amount of force, nearly losing her footing, she decided that the tower was the better way.

“Uh, guys… there’s a lot of water here.”

Alex jumped down from the rocks and hurried to Bepo’s side. The tide wasn’t high enough to even touch the rock they were standing on, but the passage they had used was filling up with water.

“How…”

“Another opening, maybe?” Penguin suggested.

“There has to be,” Shachi replied. “We’ll have to find another way.”

Alex huffed. “I hope you like swimming, because I just checked and we aren’t jumping over those rocks anytime soon.”

“Nah, we can climb. It’s not a big stretch.”

Alex laughed nervously. “No I can’t. I can’t climb that wall. Have you looked at me?” She said, gesturing at her own body. “Do you think passing pages and lifting pens builds muscle?”

The fact that she didn’t have to insist for them to take her predicament seriously was very nice, but also slightly concerning because she did look weak enough that they hadn’t questioned her inability for even an instant. It almost made her want to climb to prove them wrong.

“I have a rope,” Penguin said. “We can go first and then help you up.”

That wall looked _so_ dodgy. She had been in enough digs to know that that sort of material couldn’t be trusted. “I don’t know…”

“Do you want to swim instead?”

The idea of getting her boots full of saltwater didn’t excite her. “Okay. We can do that.”

The worst part about it was having to trust virtual strangers with her safety. Nothing had to happen. She’d be fine.

Alex spent most of their ascent watching intently, taut as a bowstring and with most of her face hidden between her hands, but disaster didn’t strike, even though there were close calls with pieces of the cliff falling after getting crushed under their weight.

Penguin was the last to reach the top, and he did it with a celebratory jump and tossing his hands in the air. “Done! I’ll toss you the rope! Yell when you’re ready!”

“Okay!” She said, and she was not. She had to tie the rope around her waist, because nobody remembered how to make something resembling a harness, and by the time the guys had started to go up water was already lapping at their feet, so she didn’t have the luxury of time to figure out a better way.

She stood at the base of the cliff. “Ready!” She shouted, when Bepo replied, she started to climb.

The first part was easy, mainly because she had done it before without assistance, but the next was a struggle. Not only there weren’t many secure footholds, the others had broken a few of them on their way up, and the upper part of the cliff was made of a sandy material that revealed why the Marines had left the watchtower – solid foundation or not, the ground under it was going to fall into the ocean one day.

The fact that her incoming misfortune wasn’t due solely to her incompetence was a small consolation that she would hold onto for dear life.

She was on the last stretch when she lost her footing trying to reach a rock, and it wouldn’t have been a problem if the ground at the top hadn’t yielded under one of Bepo’s feet, making him slide and let go of the rope to avoid falling down and on top of her.

The fall wasn’t as bad as the one in Water 7 solely because it was much, much shorter and she didn’t have as much time to think she was going to die. Good reflexes allowed her to kick the wall and boost herself farther away from the rocks and towards the water, because her initial trajectory spelled spinal damage, and in the end, she only grazed her left arm before plunging into the sea.

She got water in her nose and a million needles in her back thanks to the impact, not to mention that the salt made whatever she had done to her arm sting like a bitch, but she was conscious and mobile.

The boys yelled at her from the top in a panic, so before anybody tried to jump down rescue her, she tried to tell them that she was fine, and the words didn’t come out very well because she was leaking water through her nose, but the message did get across.

She started to swim towards the beach, and the others disappeared from view as they ran down the small hill the watchtower was on. She should have done this from the beginning instead of almost dying. How many times did she need to remind herself to trust her instincts and not listen to anybody else? She was twenty-eight, old enough to have learned the lesson. Was she going to be this way all her life?

She walked the last few meters to the beach and undid the knots on the rope tossing it aside on the sand as she waited for them to arrive. She was checking out her arm when they did. She had managed to get a cut on her forearm, and while it didn’t look deep, it was bleeding quite a bit.

Whatever. It would stop. She could deal with that. It was another story to tell the grandchildren she’d never have. The thought made her snort.

The walk back to town was going to be interesting, though. She could have tried to stealth her way back to the inn, but honestly, she couldn’t be arsed. It wasn’t the worst she had looked.

* * *

Back in town, Alex dressed her wound, washed her clothes, painted her nails blue and proceeded to sleep through the remainder of that day and most of the next. God, she was so tired.

* * *

It was harder to climb up the wall this time because she didn’t want to put much weight on her left arm, but after a short struggle she managed it.

She looked at the harbor, and the only new vessels she saw were those of the fishermen that had just come back after working through the night. A night she had spent mostly awake because of random pains and because her body wasn’t built to sleep thirty-six hours.

She was sleepy and the joints in her hands were screaming bloody murder at her, but what really exhausted her was seeing that there hadn’t come any new ships to town in three days and she was going to need to ask for a favor. She would have much rather boarded a passenger ship and be done with it.

That morning she also had a bag of freshly baked chocolate mini croissants as a pick-me-up. She was going all out. If the combination of pastries and tea and the pretty view couldn’t lift her spirits, she sure as hell wasn’t going to feel any better until she set foot in Sabaody.

Ugh, she _really_ had to talk to the pirates. The mere thought of asking something from them made her want to crawl back in bed. She wasn’t built for asking for favors, either.

She mournfully munched on the croissants, trying to enjoy the chocolatey rush and forget about the rest, but by the time she had eating her fill, her mood hadn’t improved significantly. It probably wouldn’t until she spoke to the captain and he allowed her on board, and since he wasn’t going to, because she had a feeling that after their last conversation he wasn’t very fond of her, she was going to become even _more_ depressed and poor as she waited for another ship.

It didn’t surprise her to hear, after a while, footsteps getting closer to her, because she’d seen someone leave the Heart Pirates’ submarine from there. It did surprise her, however, that before she turned around, and before the other person said anything, a mug filled with coffee was plopped onto the wall, and right after it, so did Trafalgar Law, looking like he hadn’t woken up yet.

And she thought she looked bad that day. “Bad night?”

She couldn’t say if the odd sound that came from his throat was an affirmative response to a frustrated groan, but either way, it served its purpose. “How difficult is it to get to Dressrosa?”

In a better day, she wouldn’t have cared about the question, but it rubbed her the wrong way, so instead of replying, she just ate another croissant.

It took him a moment to realize that her silence wasn’t a sign of her thinking, but ignoring him. “What?”

“Not even a hello, or a ‘how’s your injury?’” she said, surprised that she was slightly hurt by it, though no one would be able to tell by the monotone. “I’m just an information point to you, hm? Don’t worry, there’s no feelings to hurt here. I’m just like one of those vending machines where you put a hundred belis in and the drink comes out. But you could at least give me the coin.” She didn’t look at him as she said all this, but she sure felt his stare on the side of her head. She ate another croissant. She was going to explode.

“…Bad night?”

Her reply came out muffled by the food. “Yeah.”

She wasn’t exactly sorry about what she had said, but she hadn’t meant to be mean. She held up the croissant bag towards him, and he looked at it like he didn’t understand basic body language.

“I’m full. They’re chocolate.” She added. “You look like you need it.” And not just to wake up. The guy was a noodle. She had to wonder if he ate properly.

“Look who’s talking,” he said, but he took it anyway.

The acceptance of the peace offering lifter her spirits enough to give him an answer. “It isn’t far from the Red Line,” she replied. “It’s around a three day trip with an Eternal Pose.”

He hummed and mulled over this information. He swallowed the croissant she was chewing on. “…You got an injury?”

“I thought you compared notes with your friends after you reunited every day.”

He glared at her.

Not in the mood for sass. Message received. “I cut my arm on a rock. It’s fine, I took care of it.” And to make a point, she picked up the cup with her left hand and drank.

“Let me see.”

She watched him warily, still holding the cup. “Why?”

“I’m a doctor.”

“That doesn’t answer anything.”

He sighed. “It was those idiots’ fault that you got hurt and they’re my responsibility.”

“I didn’t tell you it was their fault.”

So they _did_ compare notes.

In response at being caught, he huffed and chewed on two croissants so hard that it was clear he was doing it to contain himself.

“Here’s my ‘yet.’” She said, before she managed to piss him off for real, tempting as it was. “I know a coating engineer. He’s one of the best. And he’ll do it for cheaper than the licensed ones.”

He looked at her with renewed interest. “What do you want?”

“Take me off this shitty island and drop me off in Sabaody.”

To her surprise, he didn’t say no. “Why isn’t he licensed?”

“Because criminals can’t fill official forms.”

“How do you—hm.”

She tilted her head, waiting for the rest. “‘Hm?’”

“On one condition.”

“State your price,” she said dramatically. Sure, whatever, she could jump through one extra hoop if it meant seeing Shakky in the next few days.

“Let me check that arm.”

“What the—Are you for real?”

He shrugged. “Sounds like a good deal to me. We’re heading there anyway, now I’m getting something extra out of it.”

She hadn’t thought it would be so easy. “Thank you.”

He frowned. “I’m not doing you a favor.”

She snorted and pulled up the sleeve of her knit black jacket. It hadn’t been easy to secure well the gauze with just one hand, and it peeling it off hurt her soul more than the hair she pulled with the adhesive tape.

His hand was gentler than his tattoos word indicate when he turned her arm to examine it. “You got hurt a lot when you were a kid?”

“No, why?”

“It doesn’t look bad,” he replied. “But you need stitches. Paper will be enough.”

“Really? You just said it doesn’t look that bad.”

“What you did to it,” he retorted. “But it’ll reopen as soon as you put any stress on it. Plan to avoid justice with a fucked up arm?”

“Ugh, fine.” She put the gauze back on, sad that her work of art was no more, and pulled down her sleeve. “Do we have a deal, then?”

“Yeah. We leave tomorrow. You better not be late, because we won’t wait for you.”

“Believe me, I want off this island more than you do.” And, in an effort to be sociable, she lifted her paper cup. “Cheers?”

Trafalgar considered his move way more than any polite action devoid of meaning required, but in the end he decided that lifting his arm wasn’t going to kill him and he bumped his mug with Alex’s cup. “Cheers.”

* * *

The second tea of the morning came with a surprise. After passing by the pharmacy to buy stitches, Alex arrived at the coffee shop at the same time a small group of Marines opened the door from inside, prompting her heart to stop until she realized that they were smiling and holding the door for her. With a quiet thanks that could’ve easily been mistaken by shyness, she went inside and watched them go.

Where had they come from? There hadn’t been any new ships in the harbor.

“I thought you wouldn’t show up today, either,” was the owner’s amicable greeting.

It was true that she was late. The conversation with Trafalgar Law hadn’t taken long, but going against precedent, he hadn’t left the spot on the wall as soon as he got bored, and most of Alex’s nervous energy was gone the moment he agreed to take her along, so she hadn’t been in any hurry to move, either.

“I’ve been sleeping in,” she said with an apologetic smile. “Same as always, please.”

“Right away.”

That day, it was her who tried to keep the conversation going. It was easier when he wasn’t the first person he spoke to. “I didn’t know there were Marines in town,” she said nonchalantly.

“Someone must’ve called them. People get scared when pirates stay in town a few days.”

Uh-oh. That didn’t sound good. “The Log Pose doesn’t leave them much of a choice.”

After putting the kettle on the stove, the man took a quick glance around and bent over the counter to talk to her. She took half a step back at the unexpected movement.

“Are you doing alright?” He whispered. “Have they been bothering you?”

Alex didn’t know where that question had come from until she remembered that the two times she had run into the pirates while in town, she had been sitting on the terrace. The man must have thought that they were harassing her and that was why she had skipped a day.

“I’m fine!” She said right away. “They’re fine, really. Just bored. I guess they wanted to talk to someone.”

The man didn’t seem entirely convinced, and no wonder. “I had the impression you knew each other.”

Well, shit. What was it with people who served drinks paying so much attention? Was this customary? She’d have to ask Shakky. “I ran into one of them months ago, in another island.” She let out a short laugh. “I guess they remembered me.”

He accepted this version more easily. “That’s some bad luck,” he replied. “But don’t worry, the Marines will make sure they leave you alone soon.”

“That’s a relief,” she said. “You can’t trust pirates, no matter how nice they seem.”

It was a good thing to keep in mind.

* * *

She’d been avoiding it, because there was a dumpster down to the side of her window and the smell travelled up, but the window of her room was wide open to let in the sun. It helped her see what she was doing with her torn shirt, thought it wasn’t much, since the street outside was sandwiched between buildings. After a couple of tries to get the result that she wanted, she was able to hide the new seam thanks to the tartan pattern. The bloodstains were also gone, helped by the red color of the fabric. That was her favorite shirt and she refused to throw it out without having a replacement.

Singing softly to herself as she sat on the bed, she made stitch after stitch. Like riding a bicycle, it was one of those skills that were impossible to forget, and though her fingers felt unusually clumsy holding the needle, once she got into a rhythm it was easy to let muscle memory do its thing and keep going. Had the motions always hurt this much? She had done a lot of sewing years ago, both as a hobby and a necessity, but since moving to Duster Town she had neglected it. It wasn’t like her lifestyle made her go through lots of clothes a year.

She was giving the finishing touches to the sleeve and about to reinforce a couple of buttons when someone outside called her name. She peered outside the window to see _those_ three down in the street.

The first thing she said was, “How did you find me?” Because that was scary and she didn’t mind sounding rude at the moment.

They didn’t seem to take it badly. Penguin yelled with a smile, “It’s the only inn in town!”

“No, I mean the room.”

“Bepo heard you and we followed. Didn’t know you could sing!”

She wanted to die, but she settled on swallowing her mortification. “Did you want something?”

“Yeah!” Shachi replied. “Wanna join us tonight?”

She must have been missing something. “Don’t tell me you’re going to the tower again?”

“No, we’re going out for drinks with the crew!”

Oh, that made more sense. But why they would want her there was a mystery that Penguin was about to unravel.

“Let us treat you! As an apology.”

“There’s nothing you need to apologize for.” And she added, “Besides, haven’t you seen the Marines in town? They’re after you!”

“Screw the Marines!” Shachi said way louder than he should have. “Let them come if they dare!”

She didn’t know why she had expected any measure of common sense from them.

“Don’t you want to meet the rest?” Bepo asked. “Before tomorrow? Captain told us.”

He had a point, and he was very cute, but he was also under the misconception that she was looking forward to making new friends. “How many of you are there?”

“Uhh… Fifteen or so?”

She wanted to die harder. But she had to bite the bullet at some point, so better do it in the best possible terms. She could always make an excuse and leave if she smelled trouble. “Okay, I’ll go.”

“Cool!” Penguin replied. “Go to the tavern at the harbor whenever, we’ll be around.”

That gave her pause. “You’re going to The Silver Fountain?”

“Yeah, what’s wrong with it?”

She blinked and pressed her mouth into a thin line. Breathe. It’s going to be fine. “I’ll be there.”

“Great! See you later!”

“Later.”

She watched them leave, and when she went back to her shirt, she realized it was too dark to keep sewing. The buttons would have to wait.

What she could do was pack most of her things so she didn’t forget anything, so that was what she did. The jacket from earlier with the jeans and the grey t-shirt she was wearing would do for the next day if she managed to go the rest of the night without spilling anything on herself. Before going downstairs for dinner, she closed the window and put the folder on her desk under the pillow, since she didn’t want to put it away yet, but leaving it unattended where anyone could see it seemed like a bad idea.

Like every other night, there weren’t many people in the dining hall. Some locals dining out, a couple of faces she hadn’t seen before or couldn’t remember, and a few of the inn’s other occupants. Alex said hi to them and immediately sat alone at a table to mind her own business, and then spent most of her chicken skewers contemplating if getting drunk would help with her attempts to decipher the ancient text, since it was clear that being sound of mind wasn’t helping with the materials she had on hand. Maybe old memories of forgotten info would resurface. Maybe she’d have an innovative, brilliant idea like the ones that always happened right before falling asleep and you were sure would remember in the morning, then never did. Maybe drinking alcohol surrounded by people she barely knew was a terrible idea, no matter how much easier it would make the trial of being social. Hmm.

The breeze was cool when she stepped outside, enough to make her wonder if she should have dressed in something warmer, but she wasn’t planning on staying outdoors anyway.

Ten minutes of mostly empty streets brought her to the harbor, and The Silver Fountain was impossible to miss with all the noise coming out of it and the paint flaking from the wall. The location of the Heart Pirates was, too, because both captain and navigator were standing outside, and upon closer inspection, they didn’t look too happy.

Alex approached them with a look that had ‘I told you so’ written all over, and before she had a chance to say anything, the captain spoke.

“Bar hopping,” he deadpanned, clearly indicating that this hadn’t been his idea. He was letting a suspect beer go warm in his hand, and he was doing well.

“You have to do it the other way around,” she said with fake concern. “You start in the better places so you can’t tell the taste by the time you’re scraping the bottom of the barrel.”

“Tell that to Penguin—” He said, but Bepo cut his complain with his own.

“It stinks in there!”

Alex leaned to the side to take a look through the door. What she saw was tragic. “They probably haven’t cleaned since Sengoku was made Fleet Admiral.”

“I thought you had more sense than this,” Trafalgar said.

“I didn’t want to seem rude, but I’m having second thoughts now that I’m here.”

“Run while you can.”

“Speaking of running, the Marines—”

“I’ve seen them. Not a problem.”

“…I was under the impression that your crew is getting drunk in there?”

“But not me.”

So he knew for a fact he could take on a whole troop of soldiers without a problem. Cool. She hoped he was right and it wasn’t all bravado. “They haven’t tried to arrest you yet? Your ship isn’t exactly inconspicuous.”

“They’re watching us,” Bepo said. “But they won’t attack unless they think they have a chance.”

“They’re probably making sure we don’t stir up trouble before we reach Sabaody. Or maybe they’re trying to intercept us before we can get there. Who knows?”

He wasn’t worried at all. What a great way to live. Alex couldn’t relate at all because it felt like every single one of her actions during the last months had been born out of the desire to avoid law enforcement. Her friends in Sabaody were the same as him, though, so she was used to this attitude. It sure had to be nice to be so strong as to feel untouchable by most enemies, but since Alex was a weakling and a worrier by nature, that wasn’t something she could realistically aspire to.

She really didn’t want to go inside. She was fairly sure that the wooden floor wasn’t supposed to be a dark brown-grey. “Will they buy it if I say that I showed up but they were so drunk they didn’t see me?”

“Believable if someone can corroborate the story.” The tone suggested that he wasn’t going to help.

She didn’t hesitate to aim for the one decent person in the vicinity. “Bepo, would you cover for me?”

“Only if you take me with you.” He casted a disgusted glance at the bar.

She smiled at him, one of the few genuinely happy ones in what felt like a lifetime. “Let’s go—!”

“Oooh, look who turned up!”

Before Alex could even realize what was happening, she was enveloped in a bear hug that smelled like cheap booze and all she could see were dark curls.

Throwing an arm around her, Ikkaku started to usher her into the bar, yelling at her friends, “Come say hi you bastards!”

Alex threw one last half confused, half panicked look at the two friends outside. Bepo shook his head with a resigned expression, and Trafalgar merely said, “Too late.”

* * *

Truly spending the night sober was the bravest thing she had done in living memory.

There were so many Heart Pirates. _So many._ They were too much. Half of them hadn’t introduced themselves and she was fairly sure that she’d have forgotten the other half’s names by the time she woke up in the morning.

As it tended to happen with even the most well intentioned of pub crawls, nobody had moved their asses from the chairs in the first bar, and Alex had spent a few awkward hours drinking soda and trying not to touch any sticky surfaces until she could pull off the excuse of having to pack for the next day.

The party went on without her, but Ikkaku told Penguin and Shachi that it was their duty to escort her back safely, even if there was absolutely no need for it, and when Law had seen them stumble out of the bar, he had sent Bepo as their nanny. It was so unnecessary. Particularly the drinking songs that they kept loudly murdering and encouraging Alex to join in.

Nobody was hurt on the way, thankfully, and Alex breathed a sigh of relief when she was alone at the inn’s lobby. Three more days, tops. Sail to Sabaody, get a hold of Ray, and she’d be free from these people. After that… it was hard to picture how things would go, and she had to make an effort to let it go and not overthink the possibilities. It was pointless. There were too many variables she had no control over.

She went into her room and locked the door. It was uncomfortably warm.

Like a moron, she had stuffed her pajamas in the bag earlier, and now she was too lazy to undo her mistake. While she considered if pulling them out was worth it or she should just sleep in the shirt she was wearing, she walked towards the bed to open the window, and came to a stop when she noticed something.

Had she smoothed out the bedding after sitting on it? She was fairly sure she hadn’t, but the bed looked untouched, and rooms were cleaned in the morning.

She felt a touch of anxiety in her chest, and she scared herself when she shifted her weight and one of the floorboards creaked.

With a deep breath, she pulled the bedsheets and reached under the pillow to grab the folder, half expecting it to be missing. But it was there, and after a cursory inspection none of the papers were missing or rearranged… Was she being paranoid again?

Better yet, was she going to sleep at all if she stayed there?

Since the answer to the second question was a resounding no, she put the folder with the rest of her things, took out the revolver she hated carrying to have it on hand, and put on the backpack. She’d go back to the bar and ask the pirates to take her in a day earlier. They seemed nice enough to say yes, and even in case they didn’t, she’d feel safer in a bar full of drunks than alone in a room that she wasn’t so sure was still private.

A loud sound, like fireworks, went off outside at the same time she about to secure the gun to her belt and she had a heart attack thinking she had fired it.

“ _Sonofa—_ ” she muttered, putting her free hand on her chest as she tried to breathe steadily.

Somehow, she doubted that the townsfolk had decided to throw firecrackers all of a sudden, and doing what should never be done, she climbed on the bed and opened one half of the window to check out what was going on.

Her unprivileged position in a side street didn’t let her see much, but she could hear the gunshots a few blocks down. As she suspected, the noise came from the harbor’s general direction.

Amazing timing, she thought. She couldn’t go there if there was fighting. Or maybe… what did Bepo say? That the Marines wouldn’t attack unless they saw an opportunity? And three of them had just walked away from the main group and the captain to walk her to the inn. Did they get ambushed? Was this her fault? Would they be okay? Would their deal be off if one of them got hurt because of her? And what if the same people attacking the Heart Pirates had seen her with them? Would they come after her? Had she committed a terrible mistake by giving Trafalgar Law her leftover croissants, and was this why someone had possibly been in her room?

She had three options: staying there and see what would happen, leaving through the front door, or using a window and skulk in the dark until things quieted down and she could make her way to the docks. She’d have to go downstairs, preferably, because while her room was on the second floor and there was an awning she could step on before jumping to street level, the maneuver required a finesse she didn’t think she had, and she had read enough news of tourists jumping from windows and balconies and failing to not want to join the ranks. She swore Dressrosa was a magnet for idiots.

Far from stopping, the noises kept getting louder. She had no idea what to do, and was considering cutting the overthinking short – as contradictory as it was – and walk out the front door like an innocent person when someone banged on her door.

She didn’t say anything, instead looking at it with wide eyes and opening the other side of the window as silently as possible. Please don’t make her jump, she’d had enough falls for the year, please don’t—

“Miss Costa? We know you’re there. Please open the door.”

Fuck. She looked down to street level. Terrible idea, so she set her eyes on the door. “Who are you?”

The voice on the other side was eerily calm. “We just want to have a chat with you.”

She had to do this, didn’t she? They weren’t going to leave her any other option, were they?

The awning was fairly close to her feet. What could it be? Less than a meter? It was feasible.

Her grip on the revolver tightened. “I don’t know anyone by that name.”

She sat on the windowsill with a leg on the bed and the other one hanging out. It was a small drop, and then she could go down from there, assuming her feet landed on the limited space she had. Worst case scenario, her backpack was basically all clothes, it could cushion a fall from that height.

The noises on the street were coming closer. People were running, but nothing she could see yet. Why were they heading towards her?

The next blow to the door tore it from its hinges, and in the moment it fell, Alex saw two of the new faces from earlier in the dining hall, but she guessed they were tired of discretion or legally mandated to wear the uniform during work hours, because the black suits and freaking black fedoras were hard to miss.

She shot at them twice, hoping to buy a little bit of time, pulled the other leg over the ledge and dropped. Both of her feet touched the awning, but she lost her balance with the impact and one of them slipped, and the rest of her with it. That was a two meter drop that landed on her backpack and rolled on her injured arm.

No sooner than she managed to pull herself up, trying as hard as she could not to pay attention to the pain, someone bumped into her and almost sent her to the ground again, and maybe that was a good thing, because she would have shot Shachi in the face if she had been in a stable position.

“Are you okay?” he asked.

“What are you doing here?!”

“Came for you! We’re bouncing early!” He pulled her away from the window and towards their group. The three of them had come back and brought along their captain.

“Your friends—”

“They’re having fun,” Penguin replied.

“Stay back.” Trafalgar said. “ _Room._ ”

A blue film enveloped the area, and at first Alex didn’t know if she was seeing right or she was about to pass out and that was why she was seeing colors, but what followed made pretty clear that she wasn’t hallucinating it.

He said another word, and with a gesture of a hand, the dumpster just left of the window was lifted from the ground and moved below at the same time one of the agents jumped from it with much more grace than Alex could have aspired to, not that it helped him any, because he fell directly into it. She didn’t understand how that was supposed to stop him, though, until the dumpster was lifted to the second floor window, turned ninety degrees, and attached to the building so it covered the window. As a bonus, the lid closed when it collided with the wall, trapping the agent inside of it.

So… that was the power of the Op Op Fruit? Levitating and sticking stuff to places?

“Done,” he declared. “Let’s go!”

Everybody started running, but Alex didn’t even get a fair chance to get left behind because Bepo picked her up with ease and carried her under his arm as he sprinted. This whole getting grabbed without consent thing was getting old fast and she hoped it didn’t become a permanent fixture in this new life of hers.

There wasn’t a lot Alex could see, because she was staring directly at the floor from her position, but the shooting noises had subsided and she did catch a few shapes on the ground that looked like body parts and that she immediately regretted seeing. Right, pirates. That was one of the things that could happen if you dealt with them. She should count herself lucky that for whatever reason she was on their good side.

In a matter of minutes, she was dangling over the edge of a gangplank as Bepo crossed it, and she shut her eyes as hard as she could until she felt him stop and put her upright. Her feet touched wood, and she released a breath she didn’t know she had been holding.

Many of the Heart Pirates were already on board, and the rest were visible from the deck. Their group had lost the captain somewhere along the way; she guessed he’d lingered behind to herd the remaining member of the crew towards the submarine.

With wonder, Alex looked at her feet. She was standing on one of the tackiest ships she’d ever seen and she loved it.

“Are you hurt?” Penguin asked her.

“That’s a good question.” Her hip was undeniably sore from the fall and she didn’t doubt a big bruise was forming, but nothing appeared to be broken. She removed her jacket to take a look at her arm, and as soon as she did, she saw blood staining the bandages that covered her injury. She grimaced. “I think I reopened it.”

“You should let captain take a look at it when he comes back. He’ll have it fixed in a moment.”

She let out a small sigh as she peeled off the bandage to look at the injury. She didn’t know what was grosser, the blood or how badly she’d applied the stitches. “Yeah.” Might as well take advantage of the doctor on board, if they were offering, though she wasn’t looking forward to asking. She didn’t want to owe these people more than she already did, and that discomfort wasn’t going away until she found Ray. And knowing him, that could take a while.

Penguin patted her on the back. “Come inside, we’re going to get ready for immersion.”

“Your Log Pose has set already?” It shouldn’t have, unless she had lost track of time.

“As long as we’re inside this island’s magnetic field, it’ll register the new destination. We don’t have to be docked,” Bepo replied. “It’s safer this way.”

“Oh, of course.” Lurking near an island wasn’t of much service to regular ships, but a submarine could hide underwater. Unconsciously, she held the jacket close to her chest with both hands. “Um, thanks for helping me. It was very nice of you. I’ll try not to get in the way.”

Shachi snorted like she’d said something funny. “What were we supposed to do, leave you behind?” His friends laughed a little, too, and he waved at her. “Come with us, we’ll show you around.”

They were a few steps away from her when she managed to will her legs to move, and even then she didn’t know how to reply to Shachi’s words, but she thought it was best to swallow the ‘Yes’ at the tip of her tongue.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There have been a couple of references to Novel Law in this chapter. Nothing too blatant so far, but I read it this summer, loved it, and posted a bunch of interesting info on my tumblr blog, so if you're curious, you can find more there. It's pretty likely that the references will keep coming, since it's the only semi-official version of the Heart Pirates' origin we have.


	5. we need to talk

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Adjustments and a very much needed intervention.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I did it. This chapter isn't 10k. It's only 9,3k.
> 
> Happy Halloween, if you celebrate! And if not, have an awesome day anyway! Take care out there.

After ripping the gauze from the freshly reopened wound, Trafalgar Law declared, “I take back what I said last time.”

Alex wasn’t in a mood to get an earful after falling from a window. “I’ve never had to put on stitches before,” she countered. “And one handed.”

“You should’ve found someone to do it for you.”

“Yes, because I had a lot of people I could ask for help,” she replied blandly.

He looked at her, unimpressed, and returned his attention to the wound.

It was telling of her current situation, thinking about it. She hadn’t been so alone since she had settled in Duster Town, and that was solved quickly enough. Maybe she hadn’t made any great friendships there, but there was always someone she could ask a favor in a pinch. Right now, not so much.

It was a relief that an actual medical professional was looking at the cut, truth be told. It wasn’t very clean, and she wasn’t sure it was going to close properly without the assistance of someone who knew what they were doing.

He didn’t speak as he worked, and she observed what he did, in case she needed to do it again by herself. She had learned what she knew about taking care of wounds this way, watching her mother clean her grandmother’s. Many years had passed since then, but some things you never really forgot. She could still taste the sickly sweet smell mixed that hung in the room, mixed with ointment and disinfectant. It wasn’t a pleasant memory, and it brought to mind worries she couldn’t yet afford.

The door of the sickbay was wide open, and other crew members came in and out without minding them. Some smiled and waved at Alex before going back to their business. If it weren’t for the metal flooring, she wouldn’t have been able to tell at first glance that it wasn’t just a regular small clinic. There were a few cots and curtains to one side, a couple of machines that weren’t being used pushed to the wall, and on the opposite side, several drawers and cabinets made of wood and glass held neatly arranged boxes and bottles of medicine, and, she supposed, medical instruments. There was a counter with a faucet a box of gloves, and not too far from it, a stack of books that was in serious danger of falling into the sink. On another counter below a cabinet there was a wooden box with many small drawers, and a clipboard that some of the pirates that came into the sickbay wrote on after taking something with them. A ledger, she assumed.

“You have a nice crew,” she commented when no one was around, after a stretch of silence that wasn’t getting as awkward as it should have.

He didn’t lift his eyes from the wound as he applied gauze on top of the stitches. “Yeah,” was his reply.

He didn’t add anything else. It seemed that quiet was his default mode.

She tried not to think too much about what would have happened if they hadn’t shown up at the inn, but her mind wandered there anyway. She couldn’t have outrun the agents for long, and the fact that they didn’t seem to think anything of having saved her life was… It was very uncomfortable.

She didn’t like being in debt. And she certainly didn’t need the help of a surgeon to bandage an arm. Everything about this felt wrong.

To her surprise, he continued. “They were attacked on their way to the bar, so they were worried that you had been caught alone. I didn’t think Marines would go after a civilian, but—”

“Not Marines,” she interrupted. “Cipher Pol.”

He stared at her with a hard to read expression. “Are you sure?”

“Positive. They came in uniform and all.”

It was a matter of time that a bounty with her face came out. They had probably tried to catch her off guard this time, but now that she was aware that they were after her, there wasn’t any reason not to broadcast her wanted status to the entire world.

“Then the question,” he said after a pause, “is why they were there.” 

She inhaled deeply, a reflex action to steady herself. “Right.” She breathed out the air, taking the time to think as she did so. “I assume they arrived with the Marines, but how did they…” she trailed off.

How did they know to send Cipher Pol agents with the Marines? They operated separately, and as far as she could tell, there wasn’t anything else of interest in Porta Bella. Unless they were now sending Cipher Pol after notorious pirates, but those clearly fell under Marine jurisdiction.

“Who could have known you were here?” Law asked.

“Nobody?” she said immediately. “The people in Duster Town knew was that I was headed towards Sabaody, and I stopped in this island by chance, not design.”

“And you didn’t tell anybody in Porta Bella what you had done?”

She threw him a skeptical look. “You really think I’m stupid.”

“Force of habit.” Securing the bandage with a piece of tape, he finished his work and walked away from her to put away his material.

She tested the movement of the arm. Her range wasn’t impeded, but stretching it hurt in a way that indicated maybe she shouldn’t try it again. “The only people who could know are the crew and passengers of the ship I took to get here, and I’m not wanted to the public. They couldn’t have reported me. I barely spoke to anybody on that ship.”

She retraced her steps further back. Had she told anybody in Water 7 where she was going? Iceburg, perhaps? She couldn’t remember. But why would Iceburg…? No, it couldn’t be. He had been out of commission after he was attacked, and he didn’t have any reason to send government officers after her. He didn’t know what she was investigating, either, or where she came from, so was there anybody else…? There was the suspicious shipwright, but he hadn’t known anything either. Although…

If someone had been watching Iceburg, and that someone had heard them talk—

No, it was too much of a stretch. Wild conjecture wasn’t going to get her anywhere.

“Remembered something?”

“No. Um, yes, but no—dead end, I think.”

He let it go, but walked up to her again to give one last glance at her arm. “Did you get hurt anywhere else?”

He said this as glanced at a few superficial scraps on her arm, and before she could answer, he grabbed her wrist and rotated it, prompting her to wince.

Alex grimaced. She could have held back if she had that attack coming. She wanted to leave the awkward sickbay with the awkward man and stop racking up debt with an infamous criminal.

“Does it hurt?” He tested it again, and she didn’t wince this time, but she pulled her hand back.

“Yeah, but it isn’t from the fall. It’s been like that for a while.”

“Did you hit it anywhere?”

She was really hoping he’d drop it, but no such luck. “No, it’s… A few months back my hands started to hurt randomly. It’s just a nuisance, I’m fine.”

“Have you gotten it checked?”

“Not yet.” But it was getting worse, and every time the pain was particularly bothersome she couldn’t help but think of hands contorted and paralyzed and that she didn’t want to be _next_ , and that was way too many thoughts about her grandmother in a single night. Bad Alex. Think about Sabaody, the silly yellow submarine, the fluffy polar bear. “Haven’t had the time or money.”

He seemed to ponder something, then extended a hand towards the one he hadn’t examined and Alex offered cautiously. He started to press on the wrist and fingers and move them one by one.

“Did you strain the joints with too much weight or a repetitive motion?”

She put her discomfort aside to stare at him in confusion, wondering why he was asking that when it was obviously not something urgent or that had to affect him in any way. But he stared back, and she supposed it was better not to question him while she depended on his good will to reach Sabaody.

“No, the joints just started hurting. First it was my fingers, but I thought it was because they were cold.”

“How much has it spread?”

“Everywhere?” He stared at her, as if waiting for clarification. “Hands, wrists and elbows are the worst, but every other joint hurts too.”

He moved onto her elbow, and Alex felt like she wasn’t a person in the room, just body parts waiting to be examined. “Is it intermittent?”

It took her a moment to reply. The sensation was hard to explain. “Most of the time it’s a dull pain that doesn’t go away, but it gets worse sometimes.”

“It doesn’t go away,” he muttered to himself.

“No.”

“And these flares are random?”

“I think so, but they get worse when I don’t sleep much.”

“Does the pain keep you from sleeping?”

Answering that question honestly felt like admitting she had a serious problem. “…Sometimes.”

He nodded lightly to himself, and when he let go of her arm, he headed to one of the counters. “I want to look into that.”

To say she was baffled was an understatement. “Why?”

“I have two days to kill and I’m curious,” he replied, tossing a quick glance over his shoulder. “Aren’t you?”

That made sense. She could make an effort to accept that, as weird as it was. “I don’t know if curious is the right word, but yeah.”

“Good,” he said, reaching for a pair of gloves and putting them on with a snap. “I’m going to need your blood.”

Oh hell no.

She stared at the syringe he was taking out of the package with trepidation, watching an unavoidable destiny about to maul her. How was the night getting worse? She would’ve thought it wasn’t possible. “Thanks, um…” She hesitated. “Law? Can I call you that?”

“Sure. Not the worst I’ve been called.”

She smiled feebly at that. She would have found it funny, even, if it wasn’t for her imminent future.

“I may get very dizzy. I may not. You’ve been warned,” she said, cringing inwardly at herself.

He raised an eyebrow at her. Ugh, there it was, the judging stare. “You’re afraid of needles?”

“No,” she said, tired of having the same conversation every time she got a blood test, “my body just likes turning the lights off randomly.”

He wasn’t judging anymore, but she could’ve sworn there was something akin to pity in his expression, and she would’ve rather gotten laughed at. “Is there any part of your body that hasn’t turned against you?”

“…Excuse me?”

“You have allergies too.”

“How do you—”

“You were covered from head to toe in dust back in the archive.”

“Oh. That.” Allergy medication could only do so much. “I guess not,” she conceded.

* * *

The lights, fortunately, stayed on.

And as soon as Law was done poking her, she stepped out of the sickbay, looked around like a lost puppy, and realized that it may have been awkward inside the sickbay, but at least she had been there for a purpose, and now she could do nothing but walk around and try to stay out of the way. The floor she was in didn’t have any windows, and most of the movement seemed to be happening downstairs, though it was a little difficult to tell the source of the noise because the metal of the submarine carried sound like nobody’s business.

She decided to follow it, and as soon as she started going down the stairs, she ran into Ikkaku. Alex stepped aside to let her pass, but she didn’t keep going.

“You’re here!” She exclaimed, smiling. “Great, you saved me the trip to the sickbay. Did captain patch you up?”

“Yeah,” she lifted her arm to show the new bandages.

“I see an extra bandaid,” she said, referring to the spot he had drawn blood from.

“A courtesy gift, I guess.”

She laughed. “He’s already going mother hen on you? Come with me, I’ll show where you’ll sleep.”

Alex hadn’t expected that kind of reply. “He—uh, no he just wanted to—” She stumbled over her own words trying to find a way not to disclose this other virtual stranger her medical history. “I guess he wanted to check something,” she sentenced, kicking herself mentally. Very smooth, not suspicious at all.

Ikkaku didn’t question it, though. “He can get so anal retentive about checkups. I mean, we’re all adults here, yeah? I’ll tell him if I don’t feel well, I don’t need him to go after me to keep track of my sugar levels or whatever.” She complained. “But it’s kinda cute.”

Alex discreetly raised a hand to her mouth to hide the beginning of a smile. She was starting to wonder if it was possible to be in the vicinity of a famous pirate for any period of time without witnessing them lose all semblance of dignity.

But it was a good sign that Law’s subordinates could talk about him that way, she thought. So far, it sounded like every crew member she had talked to was friends with everybody else.

She followed Ikkaku down the stairs. The floor was wood instead of metal, and Ikkaku noticed that she stopped for a second to look at it.

“We covered the metal floor a while ago,” she explained. “It was too noisy, and the more people joined, the worse it got. Our rooms are here.” She pointed at a hallway. “The guys are over there, that’s Captain’s room,” she started walking towards the other branch of the hallway, “here are the showers, toilets are over there, and this,” she stopped in front of one door, “is our room.”

“Oh, that’s pretty far away from the others.” Seen from the outside, she had assumed the submarine was more cramped. Being inside of a tin can at open sea didn’t get any less unnerving, and the closed space didn’t do much to ease her worries, but the unexpected amount of space was welcome.

“Yeah, small blessings,” she replied. “Not that I have anything against them, but you know. Girl needs her alone time.”

“About that... Sorry for intruding.”

“Don’t be silly. You seem pretty quiet, I bet you won’t give me many reasons to complain. Unless—Do you talk in your sleep or something like that?”

Alex forced out a laugh. “I don’t think so?”

She smacked Alex on the back, making her knees wobble. “Don’t be so tense! We’re all friends here! You’re getting us a coating engineer, yeah?”

“Yeah,” she agreed. “I hope he’s home, because he can be a pain to find sometimes.”

“You don’t know where he is?”

“Oh, he’ll turn up for sure,” she said, tired. “He _always_ does.”

“You don’t sound too happy about it.”

“He’s…” she tried to find words to describe him and failed, “…a lot.”

“I feel ya.” She unlocked the door to their room and went in, motioning around her with a hand. “Make yourself at home! Mine’s the top bunk on the left.”

It wasn’t a big room, though it was certainly more than enough for a single person to have a lot of empty space. There were two bunk beds in the room, a closet, and a vanity that had been overtaken by an array of tools, bolts and nuts, and the chair in front of it was hidden under a pile of clothes. The bed under Ikkaku’s was covered in an assortment of personal objects, too.

Even though she was only going to stay a couple of days there and Alex didn’t have intentions of getting too comfortable, she relaxed when she saw the small mess. Here was a kindred spirit.

“I think I’ll stay closer to the floor,” she said.

“Not too fond of heights, are you?”

“Please don’t ever ask that again.”

Ikkaku laughed at her and climbed on her bed. Alex walked to the other bunk bed and sat on top of the lower bed, dropping her backpack at her feet. The mattress’ springs creaked under her weight. That would be annoying when everything was quiet, but at the moment, she was so tired that even the rug on the floor would have been welcome. Without wasting time, she changed into her pajamas and slipped under the covers, and it wasn’t long until she was out cold.

* * *

_It was the first time she boarded a ship with only complete strangers for company. She was excited to go, to see something beyond Dressrosa’s borders, but her mother was worried sick._

_(She would have never directly told her not to go, but she kept doing it in other ways: saying how much she’d miss her, and she that hoped nothing happened to her, and that her own mother would have never let her do this, but precisely because of that she would respect her decision. She thought she was being subtle. Her mother, Alex would realize in time, had a complicated relationship with self-awareness.)_

_She had cut her hair short just a few days ago, and she liked it. Everybody had told her it looked much better than before. She had fought tooth and nail since she was a child to have long hair, but it wasn’t convenient and, as it turned out when she finally grew it out, it didn’t even look good on her. She needed the change. New hair for a new life._

_A few people went to see her off at the port – her parents, of course, and also Mrs. Isabel, whose connections had been invaluable to secure the scholarship that was going to pay for her tertiary education. She was her mom’s employer, and had always been willing to help their family. Coming from a poor family, Alex owed a lot to her kindness._

_She had a feeling she had disappointed all of them with her choice of studies, but she was now on a mission to prove them wrong. And no matter what they thought, she knew she’d always have_ her _. The only person who had been happy for her and encouraged her to chase her dreams. Someday, when they were ready, they would go out to sea and find out their answers together. As long as she believed in her, Alex felt like she could do anything._

_She was—_

_…she was…_

_Who was she thinking about? There were only three people on that pier._

Alex rubbed her eyes and opened them just a fraction.

Another weird dream she couldn’t remember, another night gone.

She couldn’t recall the last time she had slept soundly through the night. Most of the time, if it was still dark, she turned a bit in her bed and fell back asleep, but this was one of those instances where her brain decided to be fully awake despite her body’s willingness to shut down for another handful of hours. It was hard to tell what time of the day it was, being underwater, but she could tell there was, at least, some sunlight outside. With half lidded eyes, she spent a while watching the shapes the water and the light made on the walls of the room until she had no option but to get up to use the toilet. Very quietly so as not to wake Ikkaku, she fished her toiletry bag out of her backpack, a towel and some clothes to change into, and went outside.

The hallway was empty, and this time there wasn’t noise coming from anywhere. She guessed that the rest of the pirates were also asleep. They had left the harbor well into the night, and many of them had stayed up working even after she and Ikkaku went to bed, so it wasn’t strange they’d want to sleep in.

Like a thief in the night, she moved unnoticed through the submarine. It was wrong. She felt with every step that she wasn’t meant to be there.

After making sure that no one else was around, she went into one of the shower stalls. She was more of a night shower person, but that was a rule she was willing to make an exception for. She went through a short struggle to find a way to keep her left forearm dry, but she managed to use the soap one handed and keep her bandages away from the water. Once the logistic problems were solved and most of her was under the shower, the events of the night began to fully sink in, and she was filled with a sudden urgency to know if she was going to get a bounty. She had to, right? They had no reason to keep her status under wraps now that they’d tried to arrest her. The question of how they knew she was specifically in Porta Bella kept nagging at her, too. It would have made way more sense to wait and try to capture her in Sabaody. Lots of people knew she was headed there.

There was no point in giving it more thought, though. She didn’t have enough information to go by. And yet, she found impossible to let it go, because she felt a primal need to find out where she had screwed up, curse her controlling nature. She couldn’t wait to sit down with Shakky and have her as a sounding board. She was good at listening. And at being smart. Way smarter than Alex.

Once she was outside of the shower and toweling her hair, her stomach started to grumble. Her first impulse was to ignore it, but common sense told her that it’d only get worse and she didn’t want to be walking around with a full orchestra in her abdomen. Something warm to drink would be nice. Ikkaku had told her before falling asleep that she could take anything she wanted, but it was still weird to intrude in someone else’s kitchen… not that she had more available options.

Oh well, she didn’t lose anything for trying. At least she could go be indecisive outside of the bathroom.

Her breach into the upper floor was tentative, all things considered. There weren’t any windows there, and she didn’t know if they kept the lights on all night or it would be completely dark.

As it turned out, aside from a few dim emergency lights, there was light coming from both the sickbay and the mess hall. No one seemed to have been hurt the night before, from what she had seen, but maybe she had been wrong? She hoped it wasn’t her fault for keeping their captain away a few minutes. She wasn’t going to barge into the sickbay to find out, though.

Quietly, she entered the mess hall and heard some tinkering coming through the galley’s door. That was convenient. She would feel much better if she had someone to ask for permission to take something.

She peered into the galley, gathering her courage to speak to whatever Heart Pirate she hadn’t had to talk to before, and she was equal parts disappointed and relieved when she saw Penguin putting food on a tray. He hadn’t noticed her yet.

She also noticed that she had been gripping the pendant hanging from her neck like her life depended on it, and she let go at once. Anxiety manifested in odd ways.

“Good morning,” she said softly to announce her presence, and even then she managed to startle him.

“Holy shit!” With a hand on his chest, he turned around. “I didn’t hear you!”

She should’ve gone back to bed. Just suck up the hunger and wait until Ikkaku woke up so she could use her as a social shield. “Oh, um, I’m really sorry, I didn’t mean to.”

He brushed it off. “Nah, it’s okay! Are you always up this early?”

She gave a quick glance around to see if there were any wall clocks nearby, but no dice. “I don’t even know what hour it is.”

“Around seven,” he supplied. “Want breakfast? I was going to bring some to the control room. They’ve been up all night.”

So she had slept less than five hours. It was still more than she had expected. “Sure! Can I help?”

“Here, just carry this—” He pointed at a tray full of drinks. “The mugs are in the cupboard below, and the coffee’s there, put whatever you want in it. Are you okay with sandwiches?”

“Sounds good.” Coffee didn’t sit too well with her that early in the morning, but as long as she had something to eat, she’d be fine. Besides, it was only polite to accept what she was being offered. Penguin and his friends had done more for her than they had to, and the easy dismissal of her ‘thank you’ last night still weighed in her mind. He really thought nothing of going out of his way to save her, and the only way she could rationalize why this didn’t seem to be a big deal for any of them was that they routinely got into much more dangerous situations.

She tried not to wonder if she was actually less safe travelling with them than on her own.

“You all right?” he asked as he put together another sandwich. “You’re taking like, a fall per day.”

“Yeah, I’ve always had strong bones.” She didn’t know how she hadn’t broken anything. “I took the bottom bunk just in case. Any other high places I should be aware of?”

He sniggered, placing the rest of the food on another tray and picking it up. “We don’t even have a crow’s nest.”

“That’s a relief.”

Alex followed him out of the galley in silence for a few seconds, until they were in the hallway and saw the light coming from the sickbay.

“Uh, there’s something…” he said in a hushed tone. “There’s something we need to talk about.”

Those words could have only sounded more ominous if Penguin had been her boyfriend. Alex immediately started to go through all the ways in which she had potentially screwed up, but thankfully he cut to the chase.

“Don’t bring up the Dressrosa thing with the rest of the crew, okay?” He sounded like he didn’t want to be having that conversation, either. “I mean, you can say you’re from there and all, but they don’t know anything, so… don’t ask.”

It wasn’t easy to decipher what Penguin meant by that. She was sure that was partly on purpose, but if she hadn’t at least tried to infer something from his words, she wouldn’t be her.

“So that means… you, Bepo, Shachi and Law are the only ones in the know? Of… whatever it is you know.”

“…Yeah. But don’t bring it up, either. It’s just—it’s Captain’s thing. Private business.”

She nodded. That was fair. She didn’t have a habit of sticking her nose in other people’s lives, anyway. “Okay.”

Something big must have happened for everybody to clam up like that. She thought it would be for the best not to mention her home island at all, if it was going to put them on edge like they had been back in the watchtower’s basement. She could do that, after all, they were going to be stuck together only for a short time, and she wasn’t too keen on talking about her life with people she had just met, either.

But then, as she decided to not mention the topic altogether, it was Penguin who went back to the subject, and his tone was light when he asked this time.

“What kind of place is Dressrosa? I only know that the newspapers say and… you know.”

She let out a wry laugh. “Yeah, not a lot of good in those, huh… Well, it’s a nice place to live, if you like the scorching sun and loud music.”

He laughed. “Sounds like the total opposite from our hometown.”

“Oh?” _Our_ , he said. She wondered how many people on board he was including there. “Is it quiet and cold?”

“Not so quiet, but it’s covered in snow nine months a year.”

“Whoa, I’m jealous,” she said without thinking. “I’ve never seen snow.”

It wasn’t entirely correct. She had seen snowflakes sprinkling down from behind the safety of her home’s windows, but as soon as it stopped snowing, it was like it had never happened.

“You haven’t? Even in Duster Town?”

“It was very humid and it didn’t get cold enough.” It was the only regret she had in regards to the climate of her chosen island. It would have been nice to have something other than stone and mud covering the streets, some days. “Sometimes it snowed a little, but it melted as soon as it touched the ground.”

“You aren’t missing that much, honestly. It’s cold and wet and a pain in the ass to move through it. I prefer your sunny weather.”

She smiled. “I guess. I’m not much for heat, though, so I think I’d like it better than the alternative.”

“Why did you want to go back, then? Got family there?”

“Yeah, my parents. I haven’t seen them in a long time.” She let out a quiet sigh. “Might be a lot longer, at this rate.”

“Guess you’ll have to cross the unofficial way,” he said, getting straight to the point of her dilemma. “What do you plan to do when you’re in Sabaody?”

Alex didn’t want to think about that yet. She could hash out the details when she could borrow Shakky’s friendly ear. “I’ll burn that bridge when I get to it.”

He stopped to stare at her. “I don’t think the saying goes like that.”

“I know exactly what I said,” she reassured him.

After a beat, he laughed, marching on again. “It’s kinda hard to tell when you’re joking.”

“I get that a lot.”

“Are you always so serious, or is it because you’re with us?”

“I’m not…” She thought a bit, unsure what to reply. “I’m not good with people. I wouldn’t have asked your Captain to allow me on board if I didn’t like you.”

“That’s good! I wanted to make sure.” He had taken the reply in stride, as if he had been expecting it. “We have our own array of awkward dudes. Nothing wrong with being timid.”

Oddly enough, that made her feel better, though _timid_ wasn’t the word she would have chosen to define herself. Maybe she didn’t need to walk on eggshells around these people. She would, anyway, because that was how she rolled, but it was the principle of the matter.

Penguin went down the stairs with the tray in just one hand, like he had practiced it a thousand times. If she had tried that, she would’ve spilled the drinks everywhere.

She had to commend him. “You balance that tray like an expert.”

“I may not look like it, but I used to work at a restaurant!” He looked awfully proud of himself.

“Really? As waiter?”

“Yeah, but I can cook too! Everybody took turns at home.”

“Ooh, you’re a catch,” she joked, and Penguin almost dropped the tray. “How does a waiter decide to become a pirate anyway?”

“Says the librarian who left the job to run from the World Government.”

“I didn’t have a choice!”

“Maybe, but you aren’t exactly innocent.”

“I mean, if the blame’s going to fall on me anyway, why not go through with it?”

He cackled. “See, there’s a rebel soul inside of you!”

Alex laughed a little too, but she wasn’t sure she found that funny. Oh, if only she hadn’t spent most of her life being a goody two shoes, who knew where she could be now? Not in that ship, that was for sure. It was crazy to think about the amount of circumstances that had piled up for her to end in her exact situation.

“Maybe so.” She would have like to believe she had it, but fact was that she had always let herself be swept by the current. When she looked back, the only decision she could pinpoint that didn’t involve her doing something because it was expected of her or because she was running away was copying the contents of that godforsaken Poneglyph. And it had felt _good_.

But she wasn’t used to being proactive in ways that mattered, and that was as far as she had gotten. Now it was time to do what she must, again. Whatever it took to see another day. Even if it was sharing a living space with fifteen criminals she barely knew for a couple of days. Oh, that was going to be a great anecdote to tell her father. She doubted her mother would find it funny, though. She’d have to wait until she was out of earshot.

“That coating engineer in Sabaody – Captain said he’s a friend of yours? And he’s wanted too?”

She welcomed the change of subject. “Yup on both accounts.”

“And he can help you after we leave? ‘Cause it’s going be dangerous for you so close to Marineford.”

“Oh, no need to worry. He and his wife have been evading justice for twenty years without moving from the archipelago. They’ll help. They better.” She had no doubt Shakky would. Ray, though? That bastard was a troublemaker. It was a miracle he hadn’t been caught yet. Being presumed dead was only so useful when half of Marineford knew your face and you still shaved your beard in the same weird way you did when you were forty and sailing the seas with the Pirate King.

But he would try to help, too.

The walk to the bridge took her to the deepest parts of the submarine. It was a large room with a helm and a console with too many buttons and levers along the wall. An oval window was at the front of the submarine, revealing the underwater scenery. Against her will, she pried her eyes away from it to pay attention to Bepo and another pirate, who were sitting in front of it on chairs that looked pretty comfortable.

“Food incoming!” Penguin announced.

“I’m starving!” Bepo said. “Morning, Alex! You’re up early.”

“Yeah, I couldn’t sleep. Too much excitement, I guess.” She forced out a laugh.

“Weird night, huh?” he sympathized. “Who were those people? Oh, by the way – we did some scouting. There’s a Marine ship at the dock beneath the watchtower.”

“So that’s where those assholes came from,” Penguin said, starting to hand out sandwiches. He looked into one and passed it to his other friend. “Clione, extra mayo.”

“Thanks.” He looked at Alex. “But yeah, Bepo says the guy Captain threw in the dumpster wasn’t a Marine.”

“He was Cipher Pol,” she replied, exhausted just thinking about it. Penguin gave her a sandwich, and she offered a smile. She found another chair to sit on before continuing. “There were two of them. World Government’s a tiny bit paranoid.”

“Oof,” he said. “You’re screwed.”

“Don’t say that!” Bepo retorted. “She’ll be fine!”

“Yeah, she will!”

She appreciated the emotional support very much, because thinking about the other option made her sick to her stomach. She was safe-ish for the time being, but once she set foot in Sabaody, all bets would be off. “Thanks, guys.” Since she didn’t want to bring down the mood, she added, rather awkwardly. “So have you been up all night navigating? Oh, you take the night shifts, right?” she said to Bepo.

“Yeah,” he replied. “We moved the Tang a little, but we’re waiting until the rest are up to sail away.”

…The what?

“The Log Pose’s set already,” Clione added.

“Um, excuse me. You said you moved what?”

“The Tang?” Bepo replied. “Oh, no one’s told you? It’s this ship’s name. Polar Tang.”

“Oh, that’s a nice—” She paused to think. She could get the thematic significance of a bunch of people from North Blue sticking the adjective ‘polar’ to a name, but… wasn’t a tang something else? “Is that a pun?”

“What do you mean?”

The three watched her curiously.

“Isn’t a tang a fish?” she asked.

“They’re a submarine type,” Clione replied. “Though this isn’t one of them. The construction is weird.”

“No, but I think tangs are also… hm.” Maybe she was wrong. She would have to look it up. “Nevermind, I must’ve been confused.”

“Captain chose the name, you can ask him where he got it from,” Bepo said, which only made her suspicions grow. “Is he up, by the way?”

Penguin replied to that. “Yeah, he’s been in the sickbay all night.”

“Did someone get injured?” Alex asked.

“Nah, he’s running some sorts of tests and reading books. He does that sometimes.”

“Oh.” She hoped those weren’t hers. They weren’t worth losing sleep over. She’d have to look for a doctor soon and have them done again. It was just one problem after another, wasn’t it? “I figured he doesn’t sleep a lot.”

“That’s why we have Bepo on pillow duty,” Clione said.

She let out a pitiful excuse for a laugh. “On _what_?”

“Bepo on pillow duty,” he repeated. Said bear was displaying a proud smile while he ate his sandwich.

“You’ll find out soon,” Penguin said with a grin. “As soon as we surface, I’d say.”

“I hope so,” Bepo said. “I need the nap.”

Alex didn’t understand anything, but took their word for it.

* * *

The pirates had a small library upstairs, close to the room where Bepo spent his time studying and drawing routes. He had mentioned it over breakfast and told Alex to go take a look to pass time, and she was overjoyed to have an acceptable excuse to make herself scarce and not be in their way.

There was a little bit of everything, but much of it was technical literature, navigation charts and encyclopedias. Maintaining the submarine and knowing their surroundings was a natural priority for sailors, so no surprises there. Luckily, that also meant that Alex didn’t have to spend a whole lot of time searching for a book on sea fauna, and the type of fish she was looking for was so common that it was bound to appear in any decent compilation.

She considered looking for Penguin when she made her discovery, but he hadn’t seen him around in a while, so there was a chance he was sleeping, and as soon as they surfaced and the deck was dry enough, Bepo had flopped onto it to take a nap. She realized what pillow duty meant when Law also went out shortly afterwards, sat against Bepo, and fell asleep right away.

That was almost as cute as it was funny. She had smiled and all when she’d seen it. Coupled with the fact that she had now proof in her hands that he had chosen to baptize his ship with a surgeonfish pun, evidence that the crew was full of dorks and the captain wasn’t an exception was mounting at an astonishing rate. It wasn’t a particularly good realization to have, either, because the fact remained that these people were dangerous and this budding familiarity made increasingly difficult to treat them as such. She was afraid to look out again and find out that someone had tossed a blanket over Law or something domestic like that. It was like reliving the times when she got to know Shakky and Ray, wasn’t it? The aura of danger and glamour gone, only to be replaced by the acknowledgement that humans are always going to human.

Someone had left the day’s newspaper on a coffee table, and she relaxed somewhat when she didn’t see her face among the new bounties. Would she get one at all? How long did it take the Marines or the government to assign a bounty? She had never paid attention to that…

Still holding the book with the incriminating information, she returned her attention to the bookshelves to see if there was anything interesting to read, and soon Shachi poked his head into the room.

“Hey!”

“Oh, hi! Good morning. Afternoon,” she said in quick succession. Could she have one conversation without making a fool of herself? Just one? Please?

“Last night was a doozy,” he replied, unaware of her internal conflict. “Are you adjusting?”

She doubted she could even come close to it in such a short time. She was an unexpected guest in someone else’s house and didn’t want to get too comfortable, in fact. “Yeah.” She tried to sound honest. “Um, Shachi, out of curiosity. Do you know where the Polar Tang name came from?”

The response was immediate. “It was Captain’s idea.”

“I mean how he came up with it.”

“Dunno,” he said after thinking for a few seconds. “Because it was cold all year ‘round in Swallow Island, I guess. Tangs are a submarine class, so…”

Alex debated whether to reveal what she had found out or keep it to herself, but the urge to shine light on the truth was too much. Besides _maybe_ it wasn’t the truth, _maybe_ it was just an odd coincidence, but she wouldn’t know unless she brought it up, so…

She flipped the book in her hands and held it out in front of Shachi so he could look at the species of fish depicted on the page.

“These are tangs,” she told him.

Shachi observed the picture of two yellow tropical fish in contemplative silence. Took the book from her hands. After a while, he said, “These are surgeonfish.”

Alex nodded.

He opened his mouth to say something, but closed it again before anything came out. He then looked at her in the eyes, or so she thought, because the sunglasses made it hard to tell, put a hand on her shoulder, and said, “You have my deepest thanks for this information. There’s something I need to do. Bye.”

And he left with the book, leaving Alex wondering what was going through his head and what was so urgent all of a sudden.

It would take her a while to find out, though.

* * *

“Captain, we need to talk.”

Law turned to the source of those sinister words. He had only entered the galley to grab some coffee. He hadn’t expected to be ambushed cup in hand by his three oldest friends.

The looks on their faces told him that this was a serious matter, and his mind started to go through the possibilities. Something in the submarine broke down? Was there a problem with the route? Had their guest done something unspeakably offensive? Had Ikkaku accidentally flashed someone again coming out of the shower and she was going on a rampage?

He couldn’t hear any screams, so he discarded the last option.

“Sit down,” Shachi said.

Without saying anything, but also without losing sight of the trio, Law warily walked to one of the chairs in the mess hall and took a seat. The others drew their chairs, too, but instead of sitting down along the table, they formed a semicircle around Law. He was trapped against the table and feeling increasingly intimidated by the second, not that he was showing it.

Bepo placed his paws together close to his mouth. “Captain…”

He didn’t like how that sounded.

“How should we say this…” Penguin started, looking at a book he was carrying. A marine fauna encyclopedia, of all things. “This is an intervention.”

Shit. What had he done now? He hadn’t fallen asleep on top of a counter in weeks. He had even slept that day! He hadn’t used the stove since the burnt soup incident and this was only the first cup of caffeine anybody had seen him touch since the day before.

Law didn’t have time to ask what was going on because Shachi was too fast. “Is _Polar Tang_ a fucking pun?”

“…What?”

“Tangs are surgeonfish,” Bepo said. “Is that a pun?”

Penguin showed him a picture of a yellow surgeonfish. “Captain. Our submarine looks like a fish. And it’s yellow.”

“Is this…” he began, realizing what they were getting at. “Wait, this is your problem?!”

“How dare you make our home into a cheap joke!” Shachi said, trying to sound offended and almost getting there.

“A surgeonfish. Really?” Bepo’s disappointment was real, though. “You never told us.”

“I thought it was obvious?”

“How were we supposed to know?” Penguin retaliated. “There aren’t surgeonfish in North Blue!”

Bepo looked the most shaken of the three. “Yeah, it’s too cold! It doesn’t make any sense! There aren’t polar tangs!”

“What then, did you want to keep the stupid name Wolf gave it or—”

Shachi lifted a finger to stop him from talking. “No excuses. Seriously, Captain. This was critical information.”

“We’ve been friends for forever,” Bepo complained.

“We’ve been missing out on the joke for what? Eight years?”

“This is why Wolf called you a tryhard,” Shachi said, nodding to himself, and the rest of them joined in agreement.

Law was speechless. He didn’t know what was going on or what had prompted it. Every time he thought he was used to these idiots, they found a new way to catch him off guard.

They all rose from their seats at once, still looking deadly serious.

“We’ll be watching you,” Shachi said.

“For puns?”

Penguin ignored him. “Be warned, we won’t be as lenient next time.”

“You _dork_.”

And as soon as Shachi said that, they made a quick exit, barely containing their laughter as they disappeared from the mess hall, leaving a disconcerted Law with his untouched cup of coffee.

In the silence of the room, alone with his thoughts, he came to the conclusion that he had no one to blame but himself.

* * *

The next day, they got close enough to the Red Line that even the sky disappeared behind it.

It looked exactly like it did from the other side, like it did in Marineford, and if she had to believe the stories, any point of the Blues that it went through. A perfectly straight strip of land that divided the world in two and housed the Celestial Dragons. It made one wonder if it was just a miracle of nature or it had been manmade. Though Alex couldn’t fathom how such a wide-scale structure could be made, much less successfully hide its origin.

She supposed the Red Line had always been there, and she didn’t need to attach a conspiracy theory to the World Government to dislike it, anyway. It did enough on its own every day.

But she had to admit, as much as she hated the whole ritual of going through Mary Geoise to cross to the other side, she hadn’t imagined the last time she saw that place had already happened. She wouldn’t miss it. But at the same time…

She had already become a little of a prisoner, hadn’t she? Confined to Paradise for the foreseeable future. It felt odd to be sad about that, when she had already seen more of the world than the average person ever did.

With a yawn, Bepo walked near Alex and stopped to see what she was doing. He followed her eyes to the wall ahead. “It’s so big,” he said, sounding sleepy still. “I’ll never get used to it.”

“Your home is on the other side, right?”

Bepo thought a little before answering that one. “My home’s here,” he said, “but my home island is in the New World, yeah.”

“Oh, sorry. I didn’t want to imply—”

“It’s okay,” he offered with a small smile. “Is your home over there, too?”

She suddenly didn’t know what to say. In a surprising display of sincerity, she said, “I don’t think I’ve had a home for a while now.”

“Do you want to go back?”

Did she? She thought she wanted to see her family, she wanted to see Dressrosa again, but at the same time… Did she want to go back, or did she feel like she had to? How did other people tell apart what they wanted to do from what needed to be done?

“Yes,” she replied, because she had to say something. “My parents are there. Do you have any family over there?”

“I have a big brother,” he replied. “I can’t wait to meet him. He became a pirate when I was little, and I haven’t seen him since. But I don’t know if he’ll be in Zou – I guess he’s sailing with his crew. I want him to see ours. I think he’ll be proud.”

Alex smiled. “A family of troublemakers, I see.”

Bepo took the remark as the compliment it was and returned the smile. “Oh, before I forget, Captain wanted to talk to you.”

“Oh?” Oh _no._ “Do you know why?”

“I’m not sure, but he said he needed to talk to you. He’s in the sickbay.”

“That doesn’t sound ominous or anything.”

Bepo laughed. “Don’t worry, he’s in a good mood.”

Since she didn’t know the guy very well and that could mean a plethora of things, she worried anyway, but the direction in which that worry went unintentionally changed from her to Law when she reached the sickbay and saw him on a stool in front of one of the counters, about to fall asleep on the book he was reading. He had a collection of coffee cups next to him. There were a few instruments inside the sink, so she guessed he had been working.

“If you need a pillow, he’s on the main deck,” she said.

“Good to know,” he replied, awake enough. “Did he tell you to come here?”

“Yeah. Is something the matter?”

“I have some preliminary results of your tests.”

“Already?”

“There’s nothing clear yet, conclusive results will take a couple weeks. But I would look for a good doctor in Sabaody, if I were you. The signs point a rheumatic disease.”

Oh shit. That had the potential to be very bad. It wasn’t neurological at least, she had seen firsthand what that could do to a person, but still… “Like arthritis?” she said, bracing herself for what she had suspected for a while.

“Could be,” he replied, “could be a host of other things. Is there a history in your family?”

“I think my grandmother went undiagnosed. ”

“Do you sleep well usually?”

She hesitated. “Define well?”

He regarded her skeptically. “Thought so. Maybe _you_ should get a pillow.”

She sighed. “I sleep, I just—I wake up a lot.”

“Hmm.” He reached for a paper and a pen inside of a cabinet and scribbled something. “Do your eyes or mouth feel dry?”

“Uh… Now that you mention it… yeah?”

“Do you get sores in your mouth?”

“Every now and then, but that’s happened since I was little. The doctors never said it was a sign of anything.” She added, a little annoyed at them if it turned out to be a sign of something. He wouldn’t be asking without a reason.

“Does the sun—” He cut himself short to stare at her. “You aren’t out in the sun a lot, are you?”

She didn’t know if she was being judged for being a walking reflective vest. “I hate it. It’s my personal seastone.”

“Speaking of which,” he said after one last annotation, eyes flicking to the pendant hanging from her neck, “ _that_ is seastone, isn’t it?”

“Yeah.” A pause. “Is it really that dangerous to Devil Fruit users?”

“Don’t get it near me.”

“I didn’t intend to,” she said, and put the pendant under her clothes, leaving only the cord visible.

He returned to the paper. “Do you get rashes in the sun?”

“It’s more a temperature thing than being hit by sunlight, but yeah.” Before he could shoot another question, she asked the most delicate tone she could muster, hoping not to offend, “Why are you so interested?”

“I’m not,” he replied flippantly. “It’s a way to pass time.”

“Like a puzzle, huh,” she commented. “I guess days at sea are long.”

“Sometimes. Other times you can’t catch your breath.”

The last two days had certainly been quiet, and though she was entertained by the novelty, he didn’t have that advantage. “Well, you’ll have something to do soon. The Sabaody Archipelago’s already visible.”

He smirked. “That should be interesting. Say,” he began, “is there any way to get into that auction house you mentioned?”

“Yes, entrance is free.” She frowned, and though she thought she knew the answer, she felt the need to ask, “Don’t tell me you’re looking for a slave.”

He didn’t look offended by the accusation. “I’m looking for the bastard who sells them.”

“I doubt he’ll be there.”

“That’s alright. I just want to watch.”

Alex couldn’t blame him for wanting to see it with his own eyes. And it had to be seen to be believed, the scale to which the slave market had grown. She had never been inside the Human Auctioning House, but she had seen the ‘goods’ getting brought in. She would have liked to say that one could never get used to that, but… after a while, everyone did. It was a fact of life, in Sabaody. People got sold. You just looked the other way and kept out of trouble so you weren’t next.

“Do you know how Marines call Doflamingo’s auction house?” she said with a wry smile. “‘Public Employment Security Office.’”

Law was silent at that.

“That’s why it keeps running without government interference. Watch out if you go, because there’ll be a lot of security. Celestial Dragons like to show up.”

“I’ll keep it in mind.”

She hummed. “Thanks for the tests.”

“By the time they’re done, you won’t be here anymore. I’m not doing you a favor.”

“Well, thank you for the stitches, in that case.”

“Speaking of them, how’s the—hm.” He cut himself short, frowned at nobody in particular, and stood up. “Whatever. I’m done here.” Picking up two of the cups, he left the sickbay, leaving a confused Alex behind.

* * *

She woke up with the sound of the anchor being dropped and immediately looked through the porthole. In the dark of the night, the lights of the tourist zone of Sabaody shone bright.

Alex couldn’t help the smile that crept on her face at the sight of the mangroves. To think she’d be excited to be back after all the time she had spent there… She couldn’t wait to meet up with her friends and relax a little.

It was way too early to be up, though, and she had no doubt that she was going to have a busy day as soon as she set foot on land. She was hoping for Ray to be home, but logic dictated that she would find him gambling money he didn’t have in some seedy bar after looking for him all evening. How he hadn’t been caught yet with all the risks he took was beyond her.

She returned to bed, if only to lie down until the sun came up and get some more rest, feeling calmer than she had been since she found the Poneglyph in the library. Checkpoint reached. She’d be safe from now on, no matter who was after her.

That sense of security must have done something to her, because against her expectations, her eyes started to feel heavy again, and Ikkaku’s soft breathing and the slight rocking of the ship lulled her back to sleep.


	6. friends in high places

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The hunt for Rayleigh commences.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter isn't 10k either! It's 8,7k! And only took me twice as long as the other ones. I'm getting so good at this.
> 
> (Happy holidays!)

“He did _what_?”

The last word came out like a shriek. All things considered, it was the politest thing that she could have blurted out after the never ending walk of shame that she had endured and had at last brought her to that bar in order to track down one man. One idiot. One _trashcan_.

The bartender offered Alex a sympathetic smile that did nothing for her. A place to hide would’ve been better. How deep in shit was she if Ray didn’t turn up? The Heart Pirates had been a pretty decent bunch so far, but time was ticking and she had a feeling that this could be the last time she looked for Ray unless he showed up soon. The captain was starting to get annoyed, and she didn’t want to find out firsthand how much of what his wanted posters said was true.

“I’m sure he’s fine,” he said, but that didn’t even register as a worry to Alex. Of course he was fine. There was no way he wouldn’t be. It was her and her nerves who were _not_ fine. At all.

Ikkaku’s piercing stare wasn’t helping, and neither was Bepo’s concerned tone when he asked, “What do we do now?”

 _We._ It was sweet of him that he was still lumping her with the group. Maybe there was hope.

But not a lot. “I guess I’ll die,” Alex replied.

Despite her whining, it was an excellent question, and one she was already pondering. It was, in fact, the only thing in her mind since the bartender had told them that three nights ago Rayleigh had been gambling in the bar, betted himself, and _lost_ , the dickwad. If the man was to be believed, he had let himself be cuffed and carried away, and Alex trusted the account immediately because it was a very Ray thing to do. He was probably sleeping off the alcohol in a cell somewhere, captors unaware that the dumpster fire they had picked up was the infamous Dark King and if he hadn’t left yet was only because he didn’t feel like it.

“No! I’m sure we’ll find him!” Bepo reassured her. Perhaps he had taken the dying comment seriously. Perhaps he could see his captain murdering her for wasting his time. It was an unsettling possibility, but not enough to distract her from the very unflattering thoughts about Ray that were crossing her mind.

“We’d need a search party.” And she felt the need to add, “This is absurd.” Why did he have to choose precisely that time to be _extra_ stupid? Why couldn’t anything go the way she planned just once in her life? “He’s probably in a warehouse waiting to be brought to a slave shop. Or maybe he’s in a shop already. Those are all in the lower numbers of the archipelago.” She looked at their little group: a mink and two women, one of which was undoubtedly dead weight and looked like it. She wasn’t desperate enough to commit a tactical mistake of this caliber. Yet. “We can’t go there alone.”

“Your call. You know the area.” Ikkaku said with a small shrug, but there was a trace of amusement in her tone. “But I don’t envy you at all.”

“I don't envy me either,” she said without any bite. Compassion towards a stranger could only stretch so far in Ikkaku’s line of work, and it was clear that Alex would be the one to bring the jolly news to the captain. She wasn’t looking forward to it.

* * *

The day had started well. So well, in fact, that Alex had possibly, unwittingly, lowered her guard, and that was why life decided it was the perfect chance to throw a sucker punch at her to keep her on her toes.

Being back in Sabaody brought a nostalgic, bittersweet sensation. As soon as she was on the deck of the Polar Tang and the characteristic scent of the Eve Tree’s resin hit her, her thoughts lazily drifted to years spent roaming the archipelago with people from school, learning to navigate the groves and going to class. The smell was always somewhat overpowering at first, but after some time one started to go nose deaf, and then it was the air outside the archipelago what smelled weird. The main deck of the Polar Tang had started to go sticky by the time the pirates were ready to go out.

It wasn’t exactly home, but it was comforting. The place was familiar, and she knew that as long she was there, she wasn’t on her own anymore. That sense of security, of finally having reached the midway point of her journey, lifted her spirits like nothing had since she had laid eyes on that damned Poneglyph that had upended her life.

There was nothing that could detract from her happiness, or so she thought, as the Heart Pirates left their ship to explore and she was left with Law, Bepo, Shachi and Penguin. She had noticed those last days that they tended to stick around each other more than to the rest, and it made sense that the captain would want to see the guy who was going to coat his ship. The other three were his guard of honor, or something. Well, the two humans were the guards and the bear was the squire, because Bepo was carrying Law’s overly long sword instead of its owner. Alex wondered why anyone would want a weapon that couldn’t be carried comfortably, but in the grand scheme of odd things that pirates did, that one ranked so low it didn’t cross her mind to ask.

It didn’t matter. She was in Sabaody, slowly but steadily making her way towards Shakky, and as soon as the Heart Pirates got their ship coated, she’d lose sight of them and she wouldn’t need to put up on a daily basis with strangers or the looks they constantly attracted from respectable citizens.

Despite knowing where Shakky’s home was, Alex didn’t rest easy until they set foot on Grove 13 and found it as abandoned as ever with the exception of a lone building. The sign on the door announced it was open for business, and the sight of the moss-covered building brought a smile to Alex’s face.

“That’s the place,” she said, gesturing towards it.

The pirates, however, looked a little skeptical. She could understand why – she hadn’t thought much of the run-down aspect of the bar at first, either, but Shakky had always kept the interior impeccable, and apparently she liked the moss and the cracks in the walls. It gave the house character, she said. Alex thought it was just one of her weird quirks, but she could appreciate the aesthetic now that she hadn’t seen it in a while. It only had taken her five years surrounded by greys and muddy browns to get to that point. Funny how one never appreciated things to their full extent until they were gone.

She started walking quicker once they were close to the bar, leaving the Heart Pirates to trail behind her. Without hesitation, she swung the door open and her eyes zeroed in on the owner right away. She was standing behind the semicircular bar she knew so well, rearranging some bottles on top of a cabinet, and turned to look at Alex as soon as she heard the door.

Shakky hadn’t changed one bit. Not a single new line on her face, still wearing the same black bob and clothes meant for someone half her age, and still owning it. Alex had arrived to the conclusion that there was something about successful piracy that made people age exceptionally well. Must have been the exercise.

“Shakky!” she called, waving at her with her injured arm and regretting it immediately, and ran closer to her. She was grinning at this point, ecstatic to see a friendly face at long last.

“Welcome back!” Shakky smiled at Alex, but her gaze went past her to take a good look at the approaching newcomers, and only redirected her attention towards her friend when she deemed it was safe to do so. “About time you got here. Your things arrived three weeks ago. I was wondering if you’d had an accident.” She sent a heart-warming smile towards the pirates. “Looks like I wasn’t wrong.”

“You can’t even begin to imagine how right you were,” she replied wearily, but still in good humor. How could she not? She was with Shakky, at long last. It seemed like the day would never come. She would’ve asked someone to pinch her if not every single person in the room was capable of leaving a bruise. “Shakky, these are the Heart Pirates,” she said, turning around to introduce them. They were standing nearby, but they had left a cautionary amount of space between them and the bar. A wise move, since they couldn’t know if Shakky was a danger. And she was, to be frank, which made Alex wonder if she could hand them their asses in a one versus four, and was suddenly very disappointed that she would never know. “Law, Bepo, Shachi, Penguin.” Then she said to the boys, “Shakky’s the person who puts up with the guy we’re looking for.”

“I know who they are. Please, take a seat,” Shakky replied as she reached for a cigarette and a lighter inside her pocket. If there was anything Alex could fault Shakky for, it was that bad habit. She’d tried to convince her to drop it a few times, because not only was it stinky but unhealthy, but Shakky said there were so many ways she could die before the smoking got her that she was willing to take the risk. “They’ve been everywhere lately, and I thought they might show up with you.”

Five pairs of eyes turned towards Shakky’s face in confusion.

“Why’s that?” Alex’s good mood was replaced by suspicion and a smattering of dread, because she could only think of one way that Shakky could have associated the Heart Pirates with her and it was _not good_. “… _How_?”

Shakky’s delicate eyebrows went up. “You haven’t read the newspaper?”

“Not today,” she replied, and turned to the others looking for help. Her silent question was received with shaking heads, several noes and one ‘I never read the papers.’

“Well, well,” Shakky said, her smile growing into something edgier, amused, and that Alex didn’t like at all. “This I have to—”

“ _Shakkypleasetellmewhat’sgoingon._ ”

“See it for yourself.” Shakky took the newspaper on the opposite side of the bar and slid it towards her. She leaned against the polished wood surface and watched Alex’s reaction attentively as she took a drag of her cigarette.

Alex opened the newspaper by the middle, where the bounties were. Fearing the worst, she shuffled through them as she felt somebody approach her from behind to peer over her shoulder. Some were new bounties, some were updates, and she had nearly convinced herself she was supposed to look at the news and not the posters when she got to the last one.

She whispered something extremely rude that everybody understood despite not knowing the language, and she hid her face in her hands while what she had just seen sank in.

“That’s a lot of zeroes,” Penguin unhelpfully said.

“Shut up.” It was about time that it happened, but it didn’t mean she had to like it. She let out a long sigh.

“We’re listed under known associates,” Bepo said.

“I said shut up,” she repeated, exhausted, and she slowly removed her hands to stare back at the poster. The only thing she could muster up the strength to say was, “That’s such an old picture.”

“What did you actually do?” Shakky asked, ignoring her agony. One of the guys patted her shoulder as they returned to their barstools. “Not that I’d put ‘conspiring against the World Government order’ past you, but it’s a little unbelievable you put the plan in motion.”

“I found a Poneglyph,” she retorted.

Shakky’s face was blank for a split second, but as soon as the words registered, her laughter rang loud and clear in the whole bar. Like a set of tiny knives stabbing Alex in the back.

“Some friend you are,” she mumbled.

“You’d be laughing too if you were in my shoes.”

Alex couldn’t deny that.

She had lowered her guard the last few days, she realized. It was a fact that the bounty was going to happen sooner than later; she had known since the incident in Porta Bella, but after two days of radio silence and being in a relatively comfortable, safe place, she had allowed herself to believe a little that _maybe_ there wouldn’t be a bounty and _maybe_ she’d just have to spend the rest of her life watching out for the odd Cipher Pol agent, not civilians and bounty hunters too.

Not that this affected her current situation much. She already had a target painted on her back while she hung out with the pirates; the only thing that changed was that now someone could be aiming specifically for her and she wouldn’t bank on her current company going out of their way to help her. They were too close to Marineford to take unnecessary risks, now. They didn’t have anything to lose the last time they’d helped her, but that was not the case anymore.

She guessed that as long as the entire archipelago was focused on the swarm of rookie pirates she wouldn’t attract a lot of attention. She was pretty inconspicuous, unlike _some_ other people. Her brown hair, small frame, and utterly unremarkable face were the gifts that kept on giving. The problem came when they were gone and Alex had to move around alone. Could she barricade herself in one of Shakky’s rooms until everybody forgot her face and she could go out safely again? Would Shakky even allow her to do that? She doubted it. Maybe if she changed names, curled her hair and dyed it blue and started wearing a mask everywhere—

Whatever, that was a problem for later. The current one went by the name of Silvers Rayleigh, and took precedence over any freak outs. One step at a time. Getting ahead of herself wasn’t going to help, and with some luck she would be dead by the end of the week and managing the disaster that was her life wouldn’t be her problem anymore. The idea was _almost_ tempting.

“Whatever,” she said out loud this time. “This doesn’t alter the plans. Shakky, we’re looking for Ray.”

Her eyebrows arched upwards. Again. It gave Alex the chills. “I figured you wouldn’t come so accompanied to say hi. Coating?”

“Yeah,” she said, a little unsure seeing Shakky’s reaction. “He’s not busy with someone else, is he?”

She shrugged. “Beats me. I haven’t seen him in a while.”

Alex felt the pirates’ curious gazes fall on her. Well, mostly curious. Law was sending pointy daggers of suspicion her way.

It didn’t bother her much, since this was a routine she knew well. He’d up and disappear for a month, and he’d either come home as if he had just been out for five minutes or they would have to drag his drunken ass out of a grimy bar before he had the glorious idea to bet his underwear. She was pretty sure there was only one person alive interested in seeing him that naked, anyway.

“How long? A couple weeks?” Alex asked. She hoped she could just wait for him to come back instead of starting a chase across the lawless areas.

Shakky let out a circle of smoke. It hung in the air for a few seconds before she said, “Six months.”

An alarmed ‘ _what’_ escaped Penguin while Alex went mute at this revelation. She opened her mouth to say something until it occurred to her that she had nothing to add to that, and there wasn’t a single question she could ask that she already didn’t know the answer to.

But the guys didn’t know the answers, so of course they had to ask anyway.

Shachi began, “You haven’t seen your friend in six—”

“Husband,” Alex added absentmindedly. She was running a mental list of all the places he could be.

“That,” Shakky confirmed.

“You haven’t seen your _husband_ in _six months_ and you don’t know where he is?”

Shakky stared at him like there was nothing wrong with the scenario. “Yup.”

“But what if something happened to him?” Bepo insisted.

“I’m sure lots of things have happened to him.”

“I’m sure he has happened to a lot of things,” Alex added, fishing a pencil out of her bag and looking at the spot where her friend used to keep a notepad under the counter. “Shakky, do you have a—?”

Before she could finish the question, Shakky passed the notepad to her. The pages had yellowed somewhat, and Alex wondered if she hadn’t replaced it in all this time. She started to fill the paper with a list of Ray’s favorite dives to have an idea of where to go.

“But he’s missing, isn’t he?” Penguin continued. “Six months is a long time. Maybe he got attacked or arrested?”

“He’s probably dead,” Law said, sending a very unimpressed look at Alex. He might as well have added, ‘ _and so are you_ ,’ but if he had any intention to, Shakky’s snort cut him off.

“No,” both women said in unison.

The rotund answer created a welcome stillness in the bar, and for a moment, the only sound to be heard was the scratch of pencil on paper.

Law asked, “How are you so sure?”

“Because we would’ve heard,” Alex replied without looking. You did not simply kill the Dark King and tossed him in a ditch. The party the World Government would throw if they got their hands on him would be so loud they’d hear it back in Dressrosa.

“My husband dearest isn’t the most discreet person,” Shakky explained.

“That doesn’t mean—”

“They don’t know?” asked Shakky to confirm it.

“Of course not.” Alex lifted her head from the notepad, a bit surprised and hurt that she’d think she would babble about something so important. “It’s not my place.”

A small, fond smile adorned Shakky’s face before amusement overtook it again. “They’re in for a surprise.”

“What are you talking about?”

“You’ll see when we find him,” Alex said, passing the list to Shakky so she could check it. Shakky took the pencil from her to scratch out a coule of names and add some more. “It doesn’t affect you any—”

“I’m getting tired of surprises,” he retorted. “First you know this mysterious engineer, then he’s supposedly vanished, and now you expect us to go on a wild goose chase to find him when you don’t even know if he’s alive.”

“He is,” Shakky said as she tore the page off the notepad and handed it to Alex. Her tone was a warning, and Law must have felt the tension, because he went silent again to observe them. “There you go.”

Alex took the paper, but her attention was focused on the very annoyed pirate in front of her. “You don’t have to go anywhere,” was her reply. She sounded more icy than intended, but damn if she wasn’t getting tired of his attitude. “ _I_ will find him and bring him here.” She then looked at the list and grimaced at some of the names. She hoped Ray had the decency to show up fast. And getting up from the stool, she said to Shakky, “I’m going to check out the usual bars.”

“Let me get this straight,” Penguin stopped her, leaning against the bar and towards her. “The guy hasn’t shown up in forever and you think he’s in a bar.”

“He could be sleeping in someone else’s house right now, too,” Shakky said.

“Yeah, but I can’t check those,” Alex replied.

Shakky nodded with a hum.

Whichever point Penguin wanted to make, it died after that. He probably thought it wasn’t worth trying.

“I’ll probably find him in a gambling den, but I’d rather start with the less ille—” she had second thoughts about her wording. Legality wasn’t a concern anymore. “—the less seedy places. Anyway, this could take a while. If you want to go sightsee—”

“You’re seriously planning on going alone?” Penguin asked, alarmed. “With a bounty on your head?”

Alex had to fight the very real impulse of taking a barstool and tossing it at a pirate’s head. The good cop bad cop routine was a little stale. Thankfully, a combination of innate inexpressiveness and years at a front desk made putting on a blank face easy. “You’re very welcome to join, but I assume that this isn’t how you want to spend your day,” she said, sending a pointed look at Law.

The tension in the air was palpable again, and she realized that they were in the exact same position as that time when she went to confront him about the stolen book, only this time they had an audience and Law’s mood was remarkably less jovial.

He threw a glance at his friends as if to make sure of something, then at Shakky, casual position calculated to the detail and piercing eyes waiting for a sign to react, and he let out a faint sigh before facing Alex again. “You aren’t going anywhere until we’ve met the engineer.”

He sounded more tired than angry, and that, Alex supposed, was something to be celebrated, but she would have liked even better if he had relented and let her search alone. “I know you don’t have any reason to trust me, but this,” she gestured at the bar, “is the only place I could disappear to, and now you know where it is.”

“That’s true, she doesn’t have any other friends. And her things are here.”

“Thanks, Shakky.”

“We were going to be walking around anyway,” Penguin said. “Maybe you’ll see him while we’re out.”

“He likes to hang out in the amusement park,” Shakky suggested, and Alex’s head snapped towards her. The reaction of the others was immediate.

 _Betrayed_. No way she’d be able to leave them behind now. She sent Shakky a cold look that simply bounced off of her.

That one sentence sealed the discussion at once, judging by the enthusiasm of the guys and the puppy eyes Bepo pulled on Law to convince him to go.

He caved in immediately.

Shakky sent a smile to Alex as the trio started to ask a barrage of questions about the park and the rides, and Alex thought, not for the first time, that Shakky was a bit of a shrew and that she wanted to be like her when she grew up.

She glanced at Law out of the corner of her eye, unsure what to make of his silence, and she found herself unintentionally staring when she saw the corner of his mouth twitching up as he listened to his friends.

* * *

Sabaody Park was as loud and full of people as Alex remembered, and she didn’t consider that a good thing, though her current company seemed to think the opposite. But while they had gone there with the flimsy excuse of looking for Ray when all they actually wanted to do was go on the rides, she did have to find him, or _else_.

She didn’t know what else was, but she had no doubt that there was an else. Though Law’s mood seemed to have improved considerably when they left Shakky’s bar, maybe influenced by the energy of his friends, Alex was more ready than ever to find Ray and put an end to this very unnerving episode of her life. The prolonged uncertainty was killing her and she was running out of chill pills.

Alex wasn’t surprised when after a while they ran into more Heart Pirates and their group grew in size, but that changed when they stopped to eat and Law decided to send Bepo and Ikkaku with her to keep searching. He had other things to do and Alex was obviously not welcome wherever he had to go, especially not when she had her own business.

She was grateful for it, truth be told, because Bepo was a darling and Ikkaku was the Heart Pirate she had spent most time with so far, even if a lot of it was sleeping, so the familiarity allowed her to relax a little. Besides, it was very different to drag them around than a guy with a bounty in the hundreds and the accompanying stares it attracted.

Thus, their afternoon and evening consisted on going to bar after bar, every one worse than the last, in search of the human disgrace Alex called a friend. She braced for complaints every time she told them they needed to check out another place, but they seemed more curious about their little tour than bothered, and she could swear Ikkaku was finding her streak of failures more and more hilarious with each joint they entered.

At least until their last stop. If Alex had looked at her now, she would have found a concerning amount of sympathy in her features, so it was a good thing she was too deep in her thoughts to notice.

“You know,” Ikkaku’s words were light as they made their way to the submarine, “Captain sent the two of us with you for a reason.”

“So I assumed,” she replied. From what she had seen, neither Ikkaku nor Bepo were easily distracted, so Alex was able to move much faster with them than before, but there had to be more to the choice. “He trusts you to make sure I won’t be able run away?”

“Good thinking!” She offered a grin that had a lot of teeth. “But there’s something else.”

“Which is?”

“I, unlike every other one of my dumb friends, wouldn’t hesitate to stab you if you did something stupid.”

“Ikkaku!”

Bepo’s agitation was promptly ignored.

“Oh. Yeah, there’s that,” Alex replied, thinking the reminder was unnecessary. She was under no illusions. These people weren’t friends. “But you don’t have to worry about it. What you see is what you get.”

“Yeah, you got that earnest, super-serious look to you,” she said with a mocking smile. “Personally, I don’t think you’re planning anything, and I don’t think Captain dislikes you either, but—”

“I’m not asking you to take my word for it,” she replied right away. That would’ve been silly of them. “The Poneglyph documents are in the Polar Tang. I’m not leaving them behind.”

“Oh.” Ikkaku thought silently for a beat, then a genuine grin spread on her face. “That’s a _much_ better insurance.”

“Business is business,” she said, feeling the topic was settled, and noticing a familiar stand to the side of the road ahead.

Ikkaku chuckled and patted Alex’s back, resting her hand on her shoulder afterwards. She was way taller than Alex. “I like you. I would shank you without remorse anyway, but I’d hate to do it.”

“I appreciate it.” And she added pointing to the stand, “Not that I’m trying to buy you, but do you want an ice cream?”

It had been closed in the morning and she assumed it had gone out of business, but she was wrong. The striped red and white awning from ages ago still stood the test of time, swayed by the soft breeze. She had gotten ice cream with friends there countless times while she lived in the archipelago, and then sat on the benches right in front of it to do some people-watching while they ate. It was funny, because as much as she looked back on those moments fondly, she couldn’t pinpoint who was with her. Alex had long accepted that her memory went kind of wonky sometime in her early twenties, and she now pulled up blanks more often than she used to.

The idea must’ve been enticing, because the two went ahead of Alex to take a look at the flavors, and soon they were leaving each with a cone in hand.

The owner didn’t remember Alex anymore. It was the little details that made her think about how much things had changed.

“These are the best I’ve ever had,” she said when resumed their walk, hoping that idle conversation would distract her from her thoughts. “You can’t find them anywhere else, either. The owner told me once they make their own batches every morning.”

“I’ll take your word for this in particular,” Ikkaku said. “Never got to eat a lot of ice cream before coming to the Grand Line, so I can’t compare.”

“Really? Why?”

She looked at Alex, amused. “Treats in North Blue tend not to be so cold.”

Ikkaku talked as if that was obvious, but Alex wasn’t having it. Going most of your life without ice cream was utterly foreign to her. “That’s not a good reason to not have ice cream.”

“Why would I want to eat something cold when it’s freezing outside?”

“I thought the weather was nice,” Bepo said. “I wouldn’t have minded more ice cream. Or popsicles. Snow is kind of plain.”

Alex had only a split second to process that Bepo had eaten snow before Ikkaku pointed out the obvious. “Bepo, you’re a polar bear.”

He winced and muttered an almost inaudible sorry, and Ikkaku just shook her head and went back to her ice cream.

Alex thought that was a very extreme reaction. She had to be missing something. “Are you okay?” she asked Bepo.

“Ah—yes, I’m fine. Sorry.”

“You don’t need to—”

“He’s always like this,” Ikkaku said, sounding a little annoyed. “Don’t mind him, he’s just overly sensitive.”

Alex felt like someone was squeezing the heart she forgot she had when she saw Bepo’s downcast face.

“There’s another place where the hotels are,” she started, trying to lift his mood. “They serve fresh waffles with ice cream and hot chocolate.” And now that she had said it, she was really craving them. “We could go after we get our hands on Ray.”

Bepo perked up instantly. “Really?”

“That sounds good,” Ikkaku agreed. “Very brave of you to make plans for the future, by the way.”

“Haha,” was Alex’s mirthless response.

Ikkaku chuckled. “Don’t worry. I’m sure he won’t be that bothered.”

Bepo quietly agreed, and Alex just wished she could have that much confidence.

* * *

“So… how dead am I if I say we have a problem?”

At the sound of a voice, Law turned around to look at the newly arrived Alex standing under his door. The words were spoken in a light, tentative tone, and her fingers were loosely intertwined in what seemed a relaxed stance, but was most likely a practiced position to not look so stiff. This assumption was born of the fact that he hadn’t seen her relax for one instant, ever, during the length of their acquaintance, and the subject she was broaching didn’t exactly lead to a casual conversation.

Not from her point of view at least. Law hadn’t expected any success on her part after the morning’s fiasco, and he was actually feeling pretty content after digging around that afternoon, but he had no reason to tell her that. It was funnier watching her try not to squirm.

“ _You_ have a problem,” he pointed out, and her mouth thinned the smallest bit. “That depends. What’s the issue?”

“That dickwad was last seen three nights ago leaving a bar with a kidnapping crew.”

Clearly, her worry was solely focused on herself.

“He was captured?”

“No,” she said, not hiding her disdain, “he went willingly.”

He tried for another possibility. “…He joined them?”

“No.”

And he had run out of them. “You aren’t making any sense.”

She took a sharp breath, eyes drifting from him to the side while she spoke. “Apparently he was out of things to gamble, so he bet himself. And lost. And he let himself be collected.”

Even if they found the guy, which Law doubted very much, he had to wonder if this was the kind of person he wanted to allow to work on his ship.

“I know what you’re thinking,” Alex commented. She certainly gave off the impression of having had all the possible thoughts a human could conjure about her friend during that day. “He’s a fucking idiot, that’s nothing new.”

“Right,” he said, not wanting to dwell on it. “So he’s lost. Forever.”

“No!” she exclaimed like that was utterly absurd, a reaction that was absurd in itself. “He hasn’t come home yet, so that must mean he’s sitting in a cage somewhere, waiting to be sold. That narrows down his location a lot. And I would’ve kept looking for him today, but I… don’t think I’m going to do a lot of good if I get thrown in a cage too.”

“Three people isn’t enough,” he said, getting where she was coming from. And she counted for half at best.

“Two young women with bounties _and_ a mink. That’s a worse idea than me going alone.” She paused. Here came the important part. “Which is why I’m here to tell you we need a capable search party.”

“ _You_ need it.”

She retorted this time. “To find _you_ a coating engineer.”

“That _you_ promised in exchange for bringing you here.”

“I’m _trying_.” And by how exasperated she sounded, Law was glad that he had ditched the search when he did. “I had no idea he was missing. Moreover, I located him in _one_ afternoon after _six months_ of silence.”

“You’ve done better than I expected, that much is true,” he admitted, and her eyes widened at that. “I’m still half convinced he’s dead.”

She snorted. “You could drop him on a raft in the middle of the Calm Belt and even then he wouldn’t kick the bucket.”

Law appraised her. The surprise in her face had been replaced by a mix of a smirk and a grimace. “Is that man actually your friend?”

She took a moment to collect her thoughts, and her expression was back to neutral when she said, “I do like him. He gets on my nerves, but I respect him – please don’t tell him that,” she added rather quickly. “I wouldn’t trust him with my purse, but he’s loyal and very good with ships.”

“Was he a pirate?” At her curious glance, he added, “You said he’s a criminal.”

“Yeah, he sailed for many years. That’s how he and Shakky met, in fact.” It looked like the corner of her mouth was about to go up, but the motion was aborted. “They had busy lives before they settled here.”

“I see.” He’d be lying if he said he hadn’t found this little tidbit of information reassuring. “Where do you think he is, then?”

“He must be in one of the low number groves. All the human shops are located there, and the kidnapping crews that don’t operate offshore have their warehouses near them.”

“Speaking of which,” he replied, “I hear tomorrow’s the grand opening of the Public Employment Security Office.”

“Catchy name, huh,” she said bitterly. “Tomorrow already? That means there’ll be a lot more movement in the area,” she said, frowning, but suddenly her face lit up. “Oh. Oh, we may just be in luck!”

“ _You_.”

“Oh, don’t be—” She wasn’t fazed by the veiled threat this time, but whatever she was going to say, she decided to cut it short. “The auction at the Human Auctioning House is the most prestigious, but there are smaller ones going on at the same time and the days after. People who can’t afford the pricier slaves go to those ones. He’s probably getting sold really soon, and knowing him he’ll escape after that and go home to lay low for a while. With some luck, he’ll return to Shakky’s on his own.”

That sounded decently reasonable. “And without?”

“I assume he’ll be back to betting whatever he managed to steal from the bastard who bought him. In which case, I will find him going to the same places I checked today. So what do you say? Should we keep searching, or…?” She trailed off and her eyes narrowed, set on him. “Hm.”

Law replied to the unspoken question, “You have an answer for everything, don’t you?”

She crossed her arms, leaning most of her weight in one leg. “You sound skeptical.”

He mirrored her posture. “Don’t you say.”

“I can put a few rocks in my pockets and jump overboard if it’ll save you the hassle.”

“No, there’s always time for that,” he shrugged it off. “I was planning on going to the auction anyway. Might as well comb the area later.”

“There will be a lot of security,” she warned. “Celestial Dragons like to bid for new toys.”

“I thought it was worth checking out.”

With the tact of a hammer, she said, “He isn’t going to be there.”

He raised an eyebrow at that, but she didn’t react, so he said, “I want to see what kind of business he runs. Besides, who’s to say a rival crew isn’t going to show up? The Marines’ attention doesn’t have to be only on us.”

She looked to the side again, pondering something. “You think they’re the type to be interested in a slave auction?”

“Who knows? I _am_ interested.”

“But you aren’t going to buy,” she said, and then likely realized she had no idea. “I hope.”

“You never know,” he said. “Maybe I’ll end up bringing back someone interesting.”

The joke fell flat. She blinked once, twice, with a frigid expression that didn’t convey much at all. “I see. Well, that’s all I had to say. I’ll be ready to head out in the morning. Good night.”

He almost, almost asked her to stop and told her he didn’t mean it, but he caught himself before he could do it, mainly because he didn’t give a damn about what she thought. It sure left a bad taste in his mouth, though.

* * *

Alex had assumed that Law would take a bigger group to the Human Auctioning House, mainly because the chances of getting in a fight if they snooped around after the auction were high, but that morning she found herself in the company of the exact same people as the day before. It was difficult to be calm when all that separated them from potential disaster were four newbie pirates.

(She had seen Bepo’s bounty, months ago, and it didn’t inspire confidence.)

One thing her current company allowed her, though, was a chance to take a good look at her surroundings as they got deeper into the archipelago. She couldn’t afford to be distracted while she navigated it alone, but knowing that she was the least eye-catching target if they were to be attacked gave her an unwarranted sense of security. She mentally thanked the white boiler suits for their service.

In most of the lawless zones of the archipelago, a lack of maintenance had given way to overgrown vegetation that crept up the walls of the houses and anchored itself to the cracks in the bricks and stone. The groves that were in direct contact with the sea were more transited, kept cleaner, but in Alex’s mind at least, the heart of Sabaody was inland, for good or for worse. It was odd to think now that she had avoided the inner groves her first years there, but after hearing so many scary tales when she moved, who could blame her? It was only after she got familiar with the terrain that she realized it wasn’t so bad if she knew which places to avoid. She’d only gotten in trouble a couple of times, if she recalled correctly, and one of those was when she met Shakky and Ray; a trade-off she’d take any day.

“You’re very quiet,” Bepo said.

Alex hadn’t noticed him walking next to her, but she managed to keep herself from giving a start when he spoke so close. “I was reminiscing.”

“You lived here some time, right?” Penguin asked.

“Yeah, nearly four years. Well, not exactly here – I was on the opposite end of the archipelago from where you’ve docked.”

“And what did you do all that time?”

“Studying, hanging out with other students...” She didn’t do anything out of the ordinary for someone who was studying full time, she thought. Despite the setting and the notorious people she had met along the way, her life had never been exciting, not in Sabaody, not anywhere. Things happened to other people, and sometimes she was there to see them. “You know, the usual.”

She felt a little… perhaps humbled was not the word, but it was the closest she could come up with when she thought of the horrific amount of sailors hailing from the Blues and the rest of Paradise that lost their lives on the way to the Sabaody Archipelago, while she just had to take a couple of ships to get there. The people she was walking with right now had surely made an enormous effort to get there. She wasn’t sure piracy paid off if one was less interested in gold than seeing new places. Then again, sailing the legal way cost much more money.

Shachi’s thoughts, however, went in a less philosophical direction. “You studied four years to be a librarian?”

She looked at him, surprised, to see incredulity pasted on his face. “I’m not a librarian.” She wondered if she was going to regret forever introducing herself as a librarian for brevity’s sake. It was likely. “And depends on where you are, but yes, many librarians study for years. There’s a lot more to the job than shelving books.”

“Then what were you doing in that library?”

“…Shelving books,” she replied after an awkward pause. “I was at the front desk a lot of the time, but I was sent there because they got requests from researchers and someone had to go dig in the archive to find what they wanted. My actual librarian colleagues ran everything else.”

“And they couldn’t do you job?”

“The old catalogue is – was, I suppose – a mess. It could easily take me a day or more to find the papers we were asked. Besides, only one of the librarians was able to read older scripts, and I was faster. I got specific training for that.”

His face lit up with recognition. “Oh, like that chicken scratch on the Eternal Pose?”

“Yes.” She offered a tiny smile.

“Still…” Penguin said, “Couldn’t you have studied somewhere closer to your home? There have to be places in the New World you could go.”

“Yes and no.” This was an explanation she’d had to give so many times it sounded rehearsed. “For the last twenty years, the World Government has liked to keep a close eye on what gets taught and researched. I could’ve gone somewhere else, but they don’t have the same resources and I was offered a full ride here. I couldn't refuse even if I wanted.” And she hadn't.

“But four years sounds like a lot of time just to… what, read books? Captain learned medicine in less than that.”

“What?” Alex blurted out as her head whipped around to look at Law, whose expression had gone from nonchalant to frankly insulted. Now that the focus wasn’t on her, she was very interested in seeing where this conversation was going.

“That’s not true,” he retorted.

Shachi tried to back up Penguin. “But you apprenticed like, two years—”

“I’d been studying for much longer,” he said before Shachi could finish, sounding defensive and perhaps, if Alex squinted, a little embarrassed. “Still am.”

“So only two years of residency, huh,” she commented. “Don’t know why I’m surprised.”

“I am a trained medical professional,” Law insisted.

“I didn’t say the contrary.” And she flashed him a kind smile that felt very out of place in her face just to drive home the point that she was being a little shit. Call it vengeance for last evening.

“Yeah, he’s a great doctor,” Penguin intervened, trying to prevent a disaster, bless his soul. “So what exactly did you do in class?”

Aware that only destruction awaited if she insisted on the previous topic, she honored Penguin’s valiant efforts with a half-assed response. “Sit through lectures, read boring papers, write more boring papers, dig up a few walls and bones, try to find a topic of interest to latch onto it and spend the rest of my life investigating it. Academia is like that.”

“Doesn’t sound very interesting,” he said.

“I suppose not.” It was burnout speaking, but every time the topic came out she was forced to remember the opportunities she had lost by booking it the moment she finished her studies, and there were few ways to make her cranky faster. Besides, she was more interested in examining the piece of information she’d just acquired. Was Trafalgar Law a quack doctor? She was pretty sure two years as an apprentice didn’t shape anybody into a good surgeon, but how did pirate doctors learn anyway? At what age had he become a pirate? How long had he been studying, actually? Weren’t his parents supposed to be doctors, too? Was the ‘Surgeon of Death’ moniker just something the Marines came up with to make him sound scary or was the cold hard truth that every patient that went through his hands kicked the bucket? Were they making fun of him?

So many questions she’d never solve. It was a relief and a shame.

“Hey, do you mind if I drop by Shakky’s?” She had thought of paying her a quick visit, and the need to extract herself from that conversation as soon as possible gave her the last push she needed to ask. “I’ll catch up with you in a second, I just want to make sure he isn’t back yet.”

“Is that a good idea?” Law asked.

“She’s just across the grove, it’s okay.” If she walked into something dangerous in the five minutes it would take her to go and come back, she’d have to accept the fact that she was doomed from the start

“Suit yourself. You know where to find us.”

Alex nodded and separated from the group and quickening her walking pace. She was at Shakky’s in no time, and she found her picking up glasses from one of the tables, though the bar was empty save for her.

“Morning!” was Shakky’s happy greeting. “I see you left the troupe behind.”

“God, they’re exhausting,” Alex let out, and Shakky laughed. “Nice job yesterday, by the way, I thought we were friends.”

Shakky chuckled at her accusation. “I felt it was better that way. The boy was right, someone should be watching your back for the time being.”

Alex let out a noncommittal hum because she didn’t want to admit that Shakky had a point. If she could take advice on staying safe and off the authorities’ radar from someone, it was her. “I’m heading out in a minute,” she said instead. “I just wanted to see if Ray had shown up before I spent another day chasing him down.”

“Any news on that front?”

“Got ‘captured,’” she made air quotes, “by a kidnapping crew.”

Shakky sighed, but her eyes twinkled with amusement. How she put up with him, Alex would never understand. “You aren’t the only person looking for him today.”

“That’s ominous.”

“Not at all. They seem like entertaining people.”

“I shudder to think of what you find entertaining,” she said with a wry smile. “Well, see you later. I think there’s a good chance we find him today.”

“Best of luck.”

“Thanks, Shakky. Bye!”

And with a wave, she left.

Though her intention was to go straight to the auction, it wasn’t difficult to find the Heart Pirates on her way there. As soon as she left Grove 13, there was a commotion down the street, and like a moth to the flame she headed towards it.

Much to her surprise, the scene hadn’t been her acquaintances’ fault. Sure, they were standing to the side watching, but they weren’t the protagonists of the incident. Alex had a notoriously bad memory for faces, but the garb and general appearance of the three men who had apparently been exchanging blows in the middle of the street was distinctive enough that she could tell they were some of the Supernovas that everybody had been waiting for. She completely blanked out on the names, though.

The guy with the hat and the cross-shaped scar said something snippy to Law and walked away, looked at Alex when he noticed she was staring, and Alex decided that the wisest course of action was to step behind Bepo and hide.

The men went away, and she was left alongside the Heart Pirates in an otherwise empty street.

“That was interesting,” Law muttered, self-satisfied, before pushing himself up from the crate he was sitting on, and started walking again.

Alex’s thoughts were more along the lines of being unable to step away for five minutes without them getting in some sort of altercation, but she kept it to herself.

Soon it was as if nothing had happened, and going forward, if the presence of a Supernova crew turned heads it wasn’t for more than an instant. Successfully living in Sabaody for any extended period of time meant that one required a good sense of how to avoid danger. Besides, the streets leading to the Human Auctioning House were so full that day that the crowd did a good job to hide them. It was a big day, and people’s attention was somewhere else. Alex tried to tune out the snippets of conversation she heard and failed.

“Heard they got a half-giant—”

“The cousin of a friend of a friend said there’d be a mermaid for sale—”

“I hope it’s true, I’ve never seen one before.”

“You think we can get one if we pool all our money together?”

“Don’t be stupid.”

Alex felt tired, disgusted, and glad to be out of hearing when she silently followed the pirates inside the building. They chose a spot in the still half-empty theater, and she sat down next to Shachi and watched the rows in front of them fill out. She knew that many people attended the auction, but it was something else to see it firsthand. They were regular people, chatting happily, like they had gone to see a play instead of human sales. She had to wonder if she would be like them, had she lived most of her life in the archipelago.

After a while, Alex noticed that everybody was opting to leave a very reasonable perimeter around them. She had hoped to blend in with the crowd, but no such luck.

Her attention switched to the main entrance, watching people and hoping to see Ray through some miracle, or maybe a familiar face. Not that she wanted to meet anyone she knew in a place that sold slaves.

She saw a curious looking group standing next to the door, likely to take a glance at the proceedings and leave. Alex assumed they were pirates because the uniform tended to be lax and she didn’t think a hard rock band in full garb had any business at a slave auction.

Then one of them, the redhead, noticed the Heart Pirates and stared, and Alex had the sinking feeling that she should know who those people were. A rival crew, she supposed.

Law noticed the staring and, being the sort to drop more gasoline into a fire, flipped the bird at the guy, who snarled but simply stopped staring and started to shittalk the Heart Pirates with his companions. Alex observed for a few more seconds, but they didn’t seem to have intentions of approaching their group. Good.

“Who was that?” Alex asked the others.

“That’s Eustass-ya. He—”

“Doesn’t deserve that bounty,” Shachi said, and Law snorted in return.

Another Supernova, then. Wonderful. Alex could imagine that it was either the happiest or the scariest day of the year for the Marines outside the auction.

She didn’t have much time to think about the logistics of how to get safely out, though, because a man stepped out onto the stage and the curtain opened behind him, revealing the first slave and the Jolly Roger of the man who ran that business from the shadows.

She couldn’t help but think of how similar the Donquixote Family’s and the Heart Pirates’ flags were, and knowing that there was clearly some sort of relationship between their captains did nothing to make her feel better.

As the announcer kept talking, Alex merely stared at the dark eye sockets of the skull and thought of home.


End file.
